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Israel says it killed 170 people and detained 800 others in a nearly week-long clash with Hamas militants at Gaza City’s al-Shifa hospital, one of the biggest battles of the war in the Palestinian enclave.
The Israeli raid on the hospital, once Gaza’s largest health facility, was launched early last week, with a brigade of special forces and tanks quickly surrounding the hospital, according to the Defense Forces Israeli.
According to Israeli officials, 170 Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad militants were killed while the IDF said 500 militants were among 800 people detained, including senior field commanders of both armed groups. Weapons and millions of US dollars and Jordanian dinars were also seized. Three Israeli soldiers were killed.
Several thousand Palestinians who had sought refuge in al-Shifa were forced to evacuate through a checkpoint to shelters south of the hospital. Patients and medical staff had been moved to a dedicated wing of the vast compound as Israeli commandos continued their room-by-room searches, with video footage indicating firefights and the forces’ use of drones and miniature bulldozers. Israeli.
“This is the operation with the largest aggregation of terrorists we have captured since the beginning of the war,” said Daniel Hagari, the IDF’s chief spokesman.
Large-scale meetings between the IDF and Palestinian militants have been rare in the five and a half months of conflict since Hamas launched a cross-border raid on Israel on October 7. Unable to match the IDF’s firepower, Hamas fighters have resorted to operating in smaller spaces. cells and the use of guerrilla tactics.
Early Sunday morning, the IDF also began a new offensive in Khan Younis, southern Gaza’s largest city, against what it described as “terrorist infrastructure.” . . and operational”. Palestinian media reported that the city’s al-Nasser hospital, which the IDF had already raided last month, would be targeted.
Israel drew widespread international censure during its first operation in al-Shifa in November. Some critics argued that the tunnels under the hospital that were destroyed in the first operation did not satisfy the IDF’s claims of a vast command and control center.
The IDF later withdrew from most of northern Gaza, including al-Shifa, and is now conducting targeted raids with smaller forces in the area. A senior Israeli military official said the withdrawal was intended to encourage greater activity by Hamas operatives that would make it easier for the IDF to target them.
Yet critics have pointed to the ongoing al-Shifa raid, and the large number of militants still active in northern Gaza, as indicators of Hamas’ continued resilience and Israel’s lack of post-conflict planning.
For many in the international community, the continued targeting of al-Shifa has deepened the misery of Gaza’s civilian population, where more than 32,000 people have been killed, according to health authorities in the Hamas-controlled enclave.
Ismail Haniyeh, the Doha-based Hamas leader, said in a statement last week that “what the Zionist occupation is doing in the al-Shifa hospital complex confirms that this enemy is fighting for the return of life to the Strip of Gaza and tries to destroy everything.” components of human life”.
Around 1,200 people were killed in the October 7 Hamas attack on southern Israel that sparked the war, with more than 130 hostages still held by the group, according to Israeli data.
Visiting the Egyptian-Gaza border crossing in Rafah on Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the humanitarian crisis in Palestinian territory a “moral outrage” and called on Israel to provide “iron-clad commitments” to increase the flow of help.
“Here we see the heartbreak and heartlessness of it all. A long line of relief trucks stuck on one side of the gates, the long shadow of hunger on the other,” Guterres said.
Israeli promises to do more to deliver food, shelter and medical supplies, particularly in northern Gaza, which aid groups say is on the brink of famine, have so far led to only a limited increase in deliveries.
The al-Shifa operation is expected to continue for several days, with a top Israeli general vowing on Friday that it will only end “when the last terrorist is in our hands – dead or alive.”