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56233


Date: November 03, 2024 at 11:25:12
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: They’re not even pretending it’s about “fighting Hamas” anymore

URL: https://apnews.com/world-news/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-come-under-attack-again-00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000?taid=672747519f4c2f0001a56118&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter#


The Associated Press@AP
Israeli troops have besieged the last three functional hospitals in north Gaza, a
new chapter in a conflict that has targeted hospitals with an intensity and
overtness rarely seen in modern warfare. The AP spent months collecting their
stories.

Tariq Kenney-Shawa:

“The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at al-
Awda. When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital
last year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.”

They’re not even pretending it’s about “fighting Hamas” anymore.



AP, linked
excerpt

Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under
attack again

A Palestinian woman reacts over the body of a child as she sits by bodies of
Palestinians killed by Israeli airstrikes on Jabaliya refugee camp, at the
Indonesian hospital, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, Nov. 18, 2023. (AP
Photo/Ahmed Alarini)

BY ISABEL DEBRE, JULIA FRANKEL AND LEE KEATH
November 3, 2024

"They were built to be places of healing. But once again, three hospitals in
northern Gaza are encircled by Israeli troops and under fire.

Bombardment is pounding around them as Israel wages a new offensive
against Hamas fighters that it says have regrouped nearby. As staff scramble to
treat waves of wounded, they remain haunted by a war that has seen hospitals
targeted with an intensity and overtness rarely seen in modern warfare.

All three were besieged and raided by Israeli troops some 10 months ago. The
Kamal Adwan, al-Awda and Indonesian hospitals still have not recovered from
the damage, yet are the only hospitals even partially operational in the area.

Medical facilities often come under fire in wars, but combatants usually depict
such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals enjoy special
protection under international law. In its yearlong campaign in Gaza, Israel has
stood out by carrying out an open campaign on hospitals, besieging and raiding
at least 10 of them across the Gaza Strip, some several times, as well as hitting
multiple others in strikes.

It has said this is a military necessity in its aim to destroy Hamas after the
militants’ Oct. 7, 2023 attacks. It claims Hamas uses hospitals as “command
and control bases” to plan attacks, to shelter fighters and to hide hostages. It
argues that nullifies the protections for hospitals.

“If we intend to take down the military infrastructure in the north, we have to
take down the philosophy of (using) the hospitals,” Israeli military spokesman
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said of Hamas during an interview with The
Associated Press in January after the first round of hospital raids.

Most prominently, Israel twice raided Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, the biggest
medical facility in the strip, producing a video animation depicting it as a major
Hamas base, though the evidence it presented remains disputed.


People walking around destruction at Shifa Hospital complex. (AP
Video/Mohamed al-Hajjar)

But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed raids on other facilities. The AP spent
months gathering accounts of the raids on al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal
Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses and
medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.

It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant
Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the
incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s
office. The office said it could not comment on specific events.

Al-Awda Hospital: ‘A death sentence’
The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at al-Awda.
When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital last
year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.

In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed once again, with Israeli troops
fighting in nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies
entering areas of northern Gaza. Its director Mohammed Salha said last month
that the facility was surrounded by troops and was unable to evacuate six
critical patients. Staff were down to eating one meal a day, usually just a flat
bread or a bit of rice, he said.

As war-wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons were struggling to treat them.
No vascular surgeons or neurosurgeons remain north of Gaza City, so the
doctors often resort to amputating shrapnel-shattered limbs to save lives.


Al-Awda Hospital, October 9 2024, Gaza City. (AP Video/Wafaa Shurafa)

“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December of last year, but
worse,” Salha said. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors and less hope that
anything will be done to stop this.”

The military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on al-
Awda hospital, says it takes all possible precautions to prevent civilian
casualties.

Last year, fighting was raging around al-Awda when, on Nov. 21, a shell
exploded in the facility’s operating room. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, two other
doctors and a patient’s uncle died almost instantly, according to international
charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had informed the Israeli military
of its coordinates.

ADVERTISEMENT

Dr. Mohammed Obeid, Abu Nujaila’s colleague, recalled dodging shellfire inside
the hospital complex. Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two janitors and
wounded a surgeon, hospital officials said.

By Dec. 5, al-Awda was surrounded. For 18 days, coming or going became “a
death sentence,” Obeid said.

Survivors and hospital administrators recounted at least four occasions when
Israeli drones or snipers killed or badly wounded Palestinians trying to enter.
Two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death in the street, staff
said. Salha, the administrator, watched gunfire kill his cousin, Souma, and her
6-year-old son as she brought the boy for treatment of wounds.


Dr. Mohammad Salha, Director of Awda Hospital. (AP Video/Wafaa Shurafa)

Shaza al-Shuraim said labor pains left her no choice but to walk an hour to al-
Awda to give birth. She, her mother-in-law and 16-year-old brother-in-law
raised flags made of white blouses. “Civilians!” her mother-in-law, Khatam
Sharir, kept shouting. Just outside the gate, a burst of gunfire answered, killing
Sharir.

On Dec. 23, troops stormed the hospital, ordering men ages 15 to 65 to strip
and undergo interrogation in the yard. Mazen Khalidi, whose infected right leg
had been amputated, said nurses pleaded with soldiers to let him rest rather
than join the blindfolded and handcuffed men outside. They refused, and he
hobbled downstairs, his stump bleeding.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The humiliation scared me more than death,” Khalidi said.

The hospital’s director, Ahmed Muhanna, was seized by Israeli troops; his
whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s leading doctors, orthopedist
Adnan al-Bursh, was also detained during the raid and died in Israeli custody in
May.

In the wreckage from the November shelling, staff found a message that Abu
Nujaila had written on a whiteboard in the previous weeks.

“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story,” it read in English. “We did what
we could. Remember us.”

Image
FILE - Palestinian medics treat a wounded person using torchlights after
running out of power at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya during the
ongoing bombardment of the northern Gaza Strip, Nov. 19, 2023. (AP
Photo/Ahmed Alarini, File)

Indonesian Hospital: ‘Patients dying before your eyes’
Several blocks away, on Oct. 18, artillery hit the upper floors of Indonesian
Hospital, staff said. People fled for their lives. They’d already been surrounded
by Israeli troops, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food,
water and supplies.

“The bombing around us has increased. They’ve paralyzed us,” said Edi
Wahyudi, an Indonesian volunteer.


Destruction surrounding the Indonesian hospital, Feb 24, 2024, Beit Lahiya,
Northern Gaza Strip. (AP Video/Mahmoud Issa)

Two patients died because of a power outage and lack of supplies, said
Muhannad Hadi, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories.

Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said around 44 patients and only two
doctors remain. He said he was so dehydrated he was starting to hallucinate.
“People come to me to save them. … I can’t do that by myself, with two
doctors,” he said in a voice message, his voice weak. “I’m tired.”

On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had facilitated the evacuation of 29
patients from Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals.

The Indonesian is Northern Gaza’s largest hospital. Today its top floors are
charred, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel, its gates strewn with piled-up
rubble — all the legacy of Israel’s siege in the autumn of 2023.


Patients crowd Indonesian Hospital as Israel assault in Gaza City forces medical
facilities to close, July 9, 2024, Jabaliya, Gaza Strip. (AP Video/Wafaa Shurafa)

Before the assault, the Israeli army claimed an underground command-and-
control center lay beneath the hospital. It released blurry satellite images of
what it said was a tunnel entrance in the yard and a rocket launchpad nearby,
outside the hospital compound.

The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital denied any Hamas
presence. “If there’s a tunnel, we would know. We know this building because
we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous,” Arief Rachman, a hospital
manager from the Indonesia-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee,
told the AP last month.

After besieging and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show
evidence of the underground facility or tunnels it had earlier claimed. When
asked if any tunnels were found, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.

It released images of two vehicles found in the compound — a pickup truck
with military vests and a bloodstained car belonging to an abducted Israeli,
suggesting he had been brought to the hospital on Oct. 7. Hamas has said it
brought wounded hostages to hospitals for treatment.

ADVERTISEMENT

During the siege, Israeli shelling crept closer and closer until, on Nov. 20, it hit
the Indonesian’s second floor, killing 12 people and wounding dozens,
according to staff. Israel said troops responded to “enemy fire” from the
hospital but denied using shells.

Gunfire over the next days hit walls and whizzed through intensive care.
Explosions sparked fires outside the hospital courtyard where some 1,000
displaced Palestinians sheltered, according to staff. The Israeli military denied
targeting the hospital, although it acknowledged nearby bombardment may
have damaged it.



0:00 / 58
A nurse from Indonesian Hospital
Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse from Indonesian Hospital, describes his dehydration and
the dire conditions at the facility amid an Israeli siege on the facility, Oct. 22,
2024.
For three weeks, wounded poured in — up to 500 a day to a facility with
capacity for 200. Supplies hadn’t entered in weeks. Bloodstained linens piled
up. Doctors, some working 24-hour shifts, ate a few dates a day. The discovery
of moldy flour on Nov. 23 was almost thrilling.

Without medicines or ventilators, there was little doctors could do. Wounds
became infected. Doctors said they performed dozens of amputations on
infected limbs. Medics estimated a fifth of incoming patients died. At least 60
corpses lay in the courtyard. Others were buried beneath a nearby playground.

“To see patients dying before your eyes because you don’t have the ability to
help them, you have to ask yourself: ‘Where is humanity?’” asked Dergham Abu
Ibrahim, a volunteer.

Kamal Adwan: ‘This makes no sense’
Kamal Adwan Hospital, once a linchpin of northern Gaza’s health system, was
burning on Thursday of last week.

Israeli shells crashed into the third floor, igniting a fire that destroyed medical
supplies, according to the World Health Organization, which had delivered the
equipment just days before. The artillery hit water tanks and damaged the
dialysis unit, badly burning four medics who tried to extinguish the blaze, said
the hospital’s director, Hossam Abu Safiya.

In videos pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safiya had fought to
maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last
weekend, there were tears in his eyes.


Scenes from Kamal Adwan hospital, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Video/Provided by
Kamal Adwan Hospital)

“Everything we have built, they have burned,” he said, his voice cracking. “They
burned our hearts. They killed my son.”

On Oct. 25, Israeli troops stormed the hospital after what an Israeli military
official described as an intense fight with militants nearby. During the battle,
Israeli fire targeted the hospital’s oxygen tanks because they “can be booby
traps,” the official said.

Israeli forces withdrew after three days, during which Palestinian health officials
said nearly all of Kamal Adwan’s medical workers were detained, an Israeli
drone killed at least one doctor and two children in intensive care died when
generators stopped working...."


Responses:
[56243] [56244]


56243


Date: November 04, 2024 at 02:45:09
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: Israeli drones murder pregnant women attempting to enter hospitals

URL: https://apnews.com/world-news/still-wrecked-from-past-israeli-raids-hospitals-in-northern-gaza-come-under-attack-again-00000192eebfd414a79fffbf88cc0000?taid=672747519f4c2f0001a56118&utm_campaign=TrueAnthem&utm_medium=AP&utm_source=Twitter


"Al-Awda Hospital: ‘A death sentence’

The Israeli military has never made any claims of a Hamas presence at al-
Awda. When asked what intelligence led troops to besiege and raid the hospital
last year, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.


In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed once again, with Israeli troops
fighting in nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies
entering areas of northern Gaza. Its director Mohammed Salha said last month
that the facility was surrounded by troops and was unable to evacuate six
critical patients. Staff were down to eating one meal a day, usually just a flat
bread or a bit of rice, he said.

As war-wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons were struggling to treat them.
No vascular surgeons or neurosurgeons remain north of Gaza City, so the
doctors often resort to amputating shrapnel-shattered limbs to save lives.


Al-Awda Hospital, October 9 2024, Gaza City. (AP Video/Wafaa Shurafa)

“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December of last year, but
worse,” Salha said. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors and less hope that
anything will be done to stop this.”

The military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on al-
Awda hospital, says it takes all possible precautions to prevent civilian
casualties.

Last year, fighting was raging around al-Awda when, on Nov. 21, a shell
exploded in the facility’s operating room. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujaila, two other
doctors and a patient’s uncle died almost instantly, according to international
charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had informed the Israeli military
of its coordinates.

ADVERTISEMENT

Dr. Mohammed Obeid, Abu Nujaila’s colleague, recalled dodging shellfire inside
the hospital complex. Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two janitors and
wounded a surgeon, hospital officials said.

By Dec. 5, al-Awda was surrounded. For 18 days, coming or going became “a
death sentence,” Obeid said.

Survivors and hospital administrators recounted at least four occasions when
Israeli drones or snipers killed or badly wounded Palestinians trying to enter.
Two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death in the street, staff
said. Salha, the administrator, watched gunfire kill his cousin, Souma, and her
6-year-old son as she brought the boy for treatment of wounds.


Dr. Mohammad Salha, Director of Awda Hospital. (AP Video/Wafaa Shurafa)

Shaza al-Shuraim said labor pains left her no choice but to walk an hour to al-
Awda to give birth. She, her mother-in-law and 16-year-old brother-in-law
raised flags made of white blouses. “Civilians!” her mother-in-law, Khatam
Sharir, kept shouting. Just outside the gate, a burst of gunfire answered, killing
Sharir.

On Dec. 23, troops stormed the hospital, ordering men ages 15 to 65 to strip
and undergo interrogation in the yard. Mazen Khalidi, whose infected right leg
had been amputated, said nurses pleaded with soldiers to let him rest rather
than join the blindfolded and handcuffed men outside. They refused, and he
hobbled downstairs, his stump bleeding.

ADVERTISEMENT

“The humiliation scared me more than death,” Khalidi said.

The hospital’s director, Ahmed Muhanna, was seized by Israeli troops; his
whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s leading doctors, orthopedist
Adnan al-Bursh, was also detained during the raid and died in Israeli custody in
May.

In the wreckage from the November shelling, staff found a message that Abu
Nujaila had written on a whiteboard in the previous weeks.

“Whoever stays until the end will tell the story,” it read in English. “We did what
we could. Remember us.”

Image
FILE - Palestinian medics treat a wounded person using torchlights after
running out of power at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya during the
ongoing bombardment of the northern Gaza Strip, Nov. 19, 2023. (AP
Photo/Ahmed Alarini, File)

Indonesian Hospital: ‘Patients dying before your eyes’
Several blocks away, on Oct. 18, artillery hit the upper floors of Indonesian
Hospital, staff said. People fled for their lives. They’d already been surrounded
by Israeli troops, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food,
water and supplies.

“The bombing around us has increased. They’ve paralyzed us,” said Edi
Wahyudi, an Indonesian volunteer.


Destruction surrounding the Indonesian hospital, Feb 24, 2024, Beit Lahiya,
Northern Gaza Strip. (AP Video/Mahmoud Issa)

Two patients died because of a power outage and lack of supplies, said
Muhannad Hadi, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Palestinian territories.

Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said around 44 patients and only two
doctors remain. He said he was so dehydrated he was starting to hallucinate.
“People come to me to save them. … I can’t do that by myself, with two
doctors,” he said in a voice message, his voice weak. “I’m tired.”

On Saturday, the Israeli military said it had facilitated the evacuation of 29
patients from Indonesian and al-Awda hospitals.

The Indonesian is Northern Gaza’s largest hospital. Today its top floors are
charred, its walls pockmarked by shrapnel, its gates strewn with piled-up
rubble — all the legacy of Israel’s siege in the autumn of 2023.


Patients crowd Indonesian Hospital as Israel assault in Gaza City forces medical
facilities to close, July 9, 2024, Jabaliya, Gaza Strip. (AP Video/Wafaa Shurafa)

Before the assault, the Israeli army claimed an underground command-and-
control center lay beneath the hospital. It released blurry satellite images of
what it said was a tunnel entrance in the yard and a rocket launchpad nearby,
outside the hospital compound.

The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital denied any Hamas
presence. “If there’s a tunnel, we would know. We know this building because
we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous,” Arief Rachman, a hospital
manager from the Indonesia-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee,
told the AP last month.

After besieging and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show
evidence of the underground facility or tunnels it had earlier claimed. When
asked if any tunnels were found, the military spokesman’s office did not reply.

It released images of two vehicles found in the compound — a pickup truck
with military vests and a bloodstained car belonging to an abducted Israeli,
suggesting he had been brought to the hospital on Oct. 7. Hamas has said it
brought wounded hostages to hospitals for treatment.

ADVERTISEMENT

During the siege, Israeli shelling crept closer and closer until, on Nov. 20, it hit
the Indonesian’s second floor, killing 12 people and wounding dozens,
according to staff. Israel said troops responded to “enemy fire” from the
hospital but denied using shells.

Gunfire over the next days hit walls and whizzed through intensive care.
Explosions sparked fires outside the hospital courtyard where some 1,000
displaced Palestinians sheltered, according to staff. The Israeli military denied
targeting the hospital, although it acknowledged nearby bombardment may
have damaged it.



0:00 / 58
A nurse from Indonesian Hospital
Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse from Indonesian Hospital, describes his dehydration and
the dire conditions at the facility amid an Israeli siege on the facility, Oct. 22,
2024.
For three weeks, wounded poured in — up to 500 a day to a facility with
capacity for 200. Supplies hadn’t entered in weeks. Bloodstained linens piled
up. Doctors, some working 24-hour shifts, ate a few dates a day. The discovery
of moldy flour on Nov. 23 was almost thrilling.

Without medicines or ventilators, there was little doctors could do. Wounds
became infected. Doctors said they performed dozens of amputations on
infected limbs. Medics estimated a fifth of incoming patients died. At least 60
corpses lay in the courtyard. Others were buried beneath a nearby playground.

“To see patients dying before your eyes because you don’t have the ability to
help them, you have to ask yourself: ‘Where is humanity?’” asked Dergham Abu
Ibrahim, a volunteer.

Kamal Adwan: ‘This makes no sense’
Kamal Adwan Hospital, once a linchpin of northern Gaza’s health system, was
burning on Thursday of last week.

Israeli shells crashed into the third floor, igniting a fire that destroyed medical
supplies, according to the World Health Organization, which had delivered the
equipment just days before. The artillery hit water tanks and damaged the
dialysis unit, badly burning four medics who tried to extinguish the blaze, said
the hospital’s director, Hossam Abu Safiya.

In videos pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safiya had fought to
maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last
weekend, there were tears in his eyes.


Scenes from Kamal Adwan hospital, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Video/Provided by
Kamal Adwan Hospital)

“Everything we have built, they have burned,” he said, his voice cracking. “They
burned our hearts. They killed my son.”

On Oct. 25, Israeli troops stormed the hospital after what an Israeli military
official described as an intense fight with militants nearby. During the battle,
Israeli fire targeted the hospital’s oxygen tanks because they “can be booby
traps,” the official said.

Israeli forces withdrew after three days, during which Palestinian health officials
said nearly all of Kamal Adwan’s medical workers were detained, an Israeli
drone killed at least one doctor and two children in intensive care died when
generators stopped working.

ADVERTISEMENT

Days later, a drone struck Abu Safiya’s son in nearby Jabalia. The 21-year-old
had been wounded by Israeli snipers during the first military raid on Kamal
Adwan last December. Now he is buried in the yard of the hospital, where just
Abu Safiya and one other doctor remain to treat the dozens of wounded
pouring in each day from new strikes in Jabalia.

The Israeli military said troops detained 100 people, some who were “posing as
medical staff.” Soldiers stripped the men to check for weapons, the military
said, before those deemed militants were sent to detention camps. The military
claimed that the hospital was “fully operational, with all departments continuing
to treat patients.” It released footage of several guns and an RPG launcher with
several rounds it said it found inside the hospital.

ADVERTISEMENT

Kamal Adwan staff say more than 30 medical personnel remain detained,
including the head of nursing, who is employed by MedGlobal, an American
organization that sends medical teams to disaster regions, and Dr. Mohammed
Obeid, the surgeon employed by Doctors without Borders who previously
worked at al-Awda Hospital and had moved to Kamal Adwan.

The turmoil echoed Israel’s nine-day siege of Kamal Adwan last December. On
Dec. 12, soldiers entered and allowed police dogs to attack staff, patients and
others, multiple witnesses said. Ahmed Atbail, a 36-year-old who had sought
refuge at the hospital, said he saw a dog bite off one man’s finger.


EDITORS NOTE: CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF INJURIES INCLUDING
SHOTS OF A DEAD CHILD - Kamal Adwan Hospital, Oct. 24, 2024. (AP Video
via MEDGLOBAL)

Witnesses said the troops ordered boys and men, ranging from their mid-teens
to 60, to line up outside crouched in the cold, blindfolded and nearly naked for
hours of interrogation. “Every time someone lifted their heads, they were
beaten,” said Mohammed al-Masri, a lawyer who was detained.

The military later published footage of men exiting the hospital. Al-Masri
identified himself in the footage. He said soldiers staged the images, ordering
men to lay down rifles belonging to the hospital guards as if they were militants
surrendering. Israel said all photos released are authentic and that it
apprehended dozens of suspected militants.

As they released some of the men after interrogation, soldiers fired on them as
they tried to reenter the hospital, wounding five, three detainees said. Ahmed
Abu Hajjaj recalled hearing bursts of gunfire as he made his way back in the
dark. “I thought, this makes no sense — who would they be shooting at?”


WHO video shows team reach overwhelmed Kamal Adwan Hospital for fourth
time in two weeks. (AP Video via WHO)

Witnesses also said a bulldozer lumbered into the hospital compound, plowing
into buildings. Abu Safiya, Abu Hajjaj and al-Masri described being held by
soldiers inside the hospital as they heard people screaming outside.

After the soldiers withdrew, the men saw the bulldozer had crushed tents that
previously sheltered some 2,500 people. Most of the displaced had evacuated,
but Abu Safiya said he found bodies of four people crushed, with splints from
recent treatment in the hospital still on their limbs.

Asked about the incident, the Israeli military spokesman’s office said: “Lies
were spread on social media” about troops’ activities at the hospital. It said
bodies were discovered that had been buried previously, unrelated to the
military’s activities.


Later, the military said Hamas used the hospital as a command center but
produced no evidence. It said soldiers uncovered weapons, but it showed
footage only of a single pistol.

The hospital’s director, Dr. Ahmed al-Kahlout, remains in Israeli custody. The
military released footage of him under interrogation saying he was a Hamas
agent and that militants were based in the hospital. His colleagues said he
spoke under duress.

The fallout
Image
A woman sits on a bed in a room of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in Deir al
Balah, Gaza Strip, Sunday, Aug. 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana, file)

Hagari, the military spokesperson, said hospitals “provide a life of their own ... to
the (Hamas) war system.” He said hospitals were linked to tunnels allowing
fighters movement. “And when you take it, they have no way to move. Not from
the south to the north.”

Despite often suggesting hospitals are linked to Hamas’ underground networks,
the military has shown only one tunnel shaft from all the hospitals it raided —
one leading to Shifa’s grounds.

In a report last month, a U.N. investigation commission determined that “Israel
has implemented a concerted policy to destroy the health-care system of
Gaza.” It described Israeli actions at hospitals as “collective punishment against
the Palestinians in Gaza.”

Image
Israeli soldier shows the media an underground tunnel found underneath Shifa
Hospital in Gaza City, Nov. 22, 2023. (AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano, File)

Some patients now fear hospitals, refusing to go to them or leaving before
treatment is complete. “They are places of death,” Ahmed al-Qamar, a 35-year-
old economist in Jabalia refugee camp, said of his fear of taking his children to
the hospital. “You can feel it.”

Zaher Sahloul, the president of MedGlobal who has also worked in Gaza during
the war, said the sense of safety that should surround hospitals has been
destroyed.

“This war has become a scar in the minds of every doctor and nurse.”"


Responses:
[56244]


56244


Date: November 04, 2024 at 03:11:25
From: akira, [DNS_Address]
Subject: AP: little or even no evidence of a significant Hamas presence in hos

URL: AP: Still wrecked from past Israeli raids, hospitals in northern Gaza come under attack again


"But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed raids on other facilities. The AP
spent months gathering accounts of the raids on al-Awda, Indonesian and
Kamal Adwan Hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients,
witnesses and medical and humanitarian workers as well as Israeli officials.

It found that Israel has presented little or even no evidence of a significant
Hamas presence in those cases. The AP presented a dossier listing the
incidents reported by those it interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s
office. The office said it could not comment on specific events."


Responses:
None


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