Israel stepped up accusations of Hamas abuses at the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital on Sunday, saying a captive soldier had been executed and two foreign hostages held at a site that has been a focus of its devastating six-week-old offensive. At one point, a shelter for tens of thousands of Palestinian war refugees, Al Shifa Hospital has been evacuating patients and staff since Israeli troops swept in last week on what they called a mission to root out hidden Hamas facilities. The military has said the sprawling hospital complex and tunnels beneath it double as Hamas command centers, a claim that Hamas and hospital administrators reject.
The IDF posted security camera videos Sunday that it says show two male captives, one from Nepal and the other from Thailand, being brought to the hospital on Oct. 7, the day of a deadly Hamas cross-border attack that triggered the current war. The footage could not be independently verified.
Amid a furious backlash from international observers and Palestinian rights groups, the IDF said it would stop using Gaza hospitals as its primary target. The military also pledged to respect the rights of its Palestinian counterparts and work to avoid harming civilians.
But Gaza’s medical services are already overwhelmed, with doctors working round the clock under fire to treat more than 100,000 injured people. International journalists who entered the strip this week saw heavily damaged buildings, fields of rubble, and toppled trees along the Mediterranean shoreline and reported that even hospitals that are operating have a hard time keeping up with the flow of wounded.
As Gaza residents struggled with the most severe casualties of the war, leaders from the US, Britain, Germany, and France stepped up calls for an end to the assault. US President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and French President Emmanuel Macron all stressed that Israel has the right to defend itself but also urged caution and pressed for more time to consider a political solution.
On Thursday, the IDF also stepped up its claims of finding a tunnel in the hospital complex. It posted a video showing what it says is the first of a series of shafts in the area and part of what it describes as a tunnel structure running 55 meters long and 10 meters deep, with a staircase, blast-proof door, and a hole that snipers could use. The military says the tunnel was built to prepare for a massive Hamas attack on southern Israel in the event of a significant ground and air operation against the militant group.
The IDF has presented several other security camera videos that it says show Hamas militants digging tunnels and training to fight Israeli soldiers. It says it has seized dozens of operatives who have disclosed tunnel digging, recruitment, and other operations details.
