Israeli troops were searching Gaza’s largest hospital in what they called a “targeted” operation to find Hamas weapons and infrastructure, as concern grew for thousands of patients and civilians sheltering at the site.
Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel says sits on top of a dense network of underground tunnels housing Hamas command centres, has become a major focus of the country’s near three-week ground offensive in Gaza.
A senior Israeli defence official said troops had “already found weapons and other terrorist infrastructure” there, as well as “concrete evidence” that Hamas used it as a “terror headquarters”. He said there had been “no friction” or fighting with civilians, patients or staff.
Medical staff reported loud sounds of fighting around the hospital — where conditions had already deteriorated sharply — and Israeli interrogations of people present on the grounds in the hours after Israeli tanks and soldiers entered the complex.
Mohamed Abu Selmeyeh, director of al-Shifa, told Al Jazeera on Wednesday: “There is intense shooting and explosions. I think they have destroyed all buildings near the hospital.
“There were also explosions last night, and this has damaged glass in the hospital, and shrapnel has entered and injured some of the displaced people.”
Israel had “interrogated some members of the medical teams”, he said, but had not brought supplies such as fuel or water. Al-Shifa’s emergency supervisor earlier said soldiers had questioned some displaced people and taken them “tied up and blindfolded” to “unknown locations”.
The Israeli raid was the climax of a days-long siege of al-Shifa that had triggered widespread fears over the fate of patients in the facility, along with thousands of people who have sought sanctuary there from Israel’s bombardment of the coastal enclave. Al-Shifa stopped functioning at the weekend because of a lack of fuel.
The IDF said it had delivered medical equipment, incubators and baby food to al-Shifa, and added that Israeli army medical teams and Arabic-speaking soldiers were present to ensure equipment reached those who needed it.
The World Health Organization said it had lost touch with health personnel at al-Shifa. “We’re extremely worried for their and their patients’ safety,” it said.
The Israel Defense Forces would be willing to consider an operational “pause” after taking control of the whole of al-Shifa, said a person familiar with Israel’s conversations with its western partners.
It would use the pause to process intelligence gained from its interrogations of people at the hospital, and to beef up logistics lines throughout Gaza before shifting its focus to the east and centre of Gaza City, the person said.
Israel had indicated to its partners that it considered the capture of Shifa a “symbolic and operational milestone” in its invasion of the enclave, he added.
A pause would also be integral to any agreement between Israel and Hamas to free hostages held by the militant group. Talks are under way between Qatar, the US and Israel to secure the release of as many as 50 civilian hostages, said a person briefed on the situation.
Negotiations were “progressing well” and an agreement would include the delivery of aid into Gaza and the release of some Palestinian prisoners held in Israel, that person said.
International aid agencies expressed alarm at the Israeli incursion into al-Shifa. “Hospitals are not battlegrounds,” said Martin Griffiths, the UN aid chief. “The protection of newborns, patients, medical staff and all civilians must override all other concerns.”
Israeli military officials said at the start of the operation at al-Shifa, its troops had encountered and killed four Hamas militants outside the hospital. The senior defence official insisted that Israeli troops operating in al-Shifa were present “in one specific area of the very large . . . hospital complex”.
But Omar Zaqout, emergency supervisor at the hospital, told Al Jazeera that soldiers were “in all the buildings around us”. He said the troops had blown up the doors to the specialised surgery building and two basements on the site. It was not immediately possible to verify his claims.
Doctors at al-Shifa have repeatedly dismissed Israeli claims that it is being used for Hamas’s military operations. A government spokesperson in Gaza, which is controlled by Hamas, described Israel’s advance into the hospital as a “war crime, a moral crime and a crime against humanity”.
Hours before Israel announced the raid on al-Shifa, John Kirby, spokesperson for the US National Security Council, told reporters that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a smaller militant faction, “stored weapons” in the hospital and were “prepared to respond to an Israeli military operation against that facility”.
Kirby added that Hamas was using hospitals and tunnels underneath them to hold hostages. But he said Washington did not support striking a hospital from the air or firefights on hospital sites.
The desperate situation in Gaza’s hospitals has caused tension between Israel and its western allies, with the US, France and other western nations increasingly pushing Israel to exercise restraint.
Selmeyeh, the hospital’s director, said there were still decomposing bodies in al-Shifa that they were unable to bury, and that rain on Wednesday had worsened conditions there. “The smell of death is everywhere,” he said.
“Patients’ wounds are starting to rot, and there are maggots coming out of them because we have not been able to change their dressings properly using simple supplies that we are now being deprived of.”
The assault on the hospital came as the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, which is home to 2.3mn people, continued to deepen, with shortages of food, fuel, water and other necessities.
Two telecommunications networks operating in the enclave warned on Wednesday that they would soon shut down because of a lack of fuel. Paltel and Jawwal both warned of a “complete telecom blackout” in the coming hours.
Thomas White, director of the UN’s Palestinian aid agency UNRWA in Gaza, said on social media platform X on Wednesday that the agency had received half a tanker of fuel from Egypt, “but its use has been restricted by Israeli authorities — only for transporting aid from Rafah. No fuel for water or hospitals.”
Griffiths said on Wednesday that the 24,000 litres of fuel the UN had received was just a fraction of what was needed to transport aid around Gaza. “We’d need about 200,000 litres a day [for that],” he said.
Griffiths also called on Israel to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel, in addition to the Rafah crossing from Egypt that is currently in use but is only designed for pedestrians rather than trucks.
People in Gaza have endured worsening conditions since Israel unleashed a retaliatory offensive against Hamas following the Islamist militant group’s devastating attack on October 7, which killed about 1,200 people. Hamas also took about 240 hostages, according to Israeli officials.
More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza by Israel’s bombardment, according to Palestinian health officials. Israel’s forces last month launched a land offensive in the coastal enclave and surrounded Gaza City, Hamas’s main political and military base. More than 1.5mn people in Gaza have been forced from their homes.
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
