The Israeli army launched an operation early Monday in and around Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, where witnesses said it came under airstrikes and was crowded with patients and displaced people near tanks.
The pre-dawn attack came amid growing concerns that Israel is about to launch a ground invasion of Gaza’s crowded southern city of Rafah, as international mediators and envoys prepare to meet in Qatar on Monday to revive stalled armistice talks.
A source who spoke on condition of anonymity said Israel’s Mossad chief David Bania, Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani and Egyptian officials ” It is expected to take place today.”
The Israeli military launched the attack based on intelligence it said “suggested that senior Hamas terrorists were using the hospital” and demanded that Gazans immediately evacuate from Shifa in Gaza City.
Witnesses told AFP that Israeli troops dropped leaflets in Arabic with the same evacuation instructions and warned “you are in a dangerous war zone!”
The health ministry in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip said residents near hospitals in the devastated city reported that dozens of people were unable to get help “due to the intensity of gunfire and shelling.”
The Hamas government media office condemned as a “war crime” the “attack with tanks, drones and weapons and shooting inside the Shifa medical center” where thousands of displaced Palestinians are taking refuge.
Israeli forces “observed terrorists opening fire on them from multiple hospital buildings. Troops engaged the terrorists and discovered several incidents of gunfire,” the army and Shin Bet security service said.
The Israeli military also said troops had been told to “avoid harming patients, civilians, medical personnel and medical equipment” and that Arabic-speaking personnel were deployed to “facilitate dialogue with patients remaining in the hospital.”
The army previously attacked Al-Shifa in mid-November, triggering an international outcry, and the army said it found weapons and other military equipment in rooms inside and outside the hospital.
According to AFP statistics based on official Israeli data, Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on October 7 that killed about 1,160 people in Israel, most of them civilians, and then broke out in the bloodiest Gaza war in history.
Islamist militants have also taken about 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 remain in Gaza and 33 of them are presumed dead.
Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas and free prisoners, and has launched a relentless bombing and ground offensive that Gaza’s health ministry says has killed at least 31,726 people, mostly women and children.
Fear of Rafa invasion
Israel’s siege has cut off water, electricity, fuel and basic supplies, leaving 2.4 million people in the region facing massive food shortages, with the United Nations warning the regions are on the verge of famine.
Due to bombing, ground fighting and growing insecurity in Gaza, land access for aid convoys from Egypt has been restricted, with some vehicles looted by desperate crowds.
The United States, Jordan and other Western and Arab countries have airdropped food into Gaza, while an emergency ship sailing from the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus has opened a new maritime corridor for humanitarian aid.
Efforts to reach a truce and a hostage release agreement involving U.S., Qatari and Egyptian mediators are expected to resume in Qatar following a week-long ceasefire in November.
However, in the face of growing global concerns, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again vowed that the military will complete the operation to destroy Hamas before and after the truce.
Global alarm is focused on the southern Gaza city of Rafah, near the Egyptian border, where some 1.5 million Palestinians now live in crowded shelters and tent cities.
Netanyahu’s warnings of an imminent ground invasion have stoked fears that civilians will be caught in the line of fire, prompting warnings of a potential “massacre”.
Israel’s top ally, the United States, which has provided it with billions of dollars in military aid, has stressed it wants to see a “clear and implementable plan” to ensure civilians are “protected from harm.”
“Where should they go?”
Israel’s prime minister reiterated on Sunday that civilians would be evacuated from Rafah ahead of any ground attack, but gave no details on where along the heavily damaged coastal strip they would go.
“Our goal of eliminating the remaining terrorist camps in Rafah goes hand in hand with getting civilians out of Rafah,” he said during a visit by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“We’re not going to do this while keeping the population in place.”
Scholz, like others before him, asked the question: “Where should they go?”
Scholz later told reporters that if the offensive in Rafah caused “a lot of casualties,” it “would make any peaceful development in the region very difficult.”
In order to reach a new truce, Hamas has so far demanded a complete withdrawal of Israeli troops, but Netanyahu has rejected this as “delusional”.
A new Hamas proposal calls for Israel to withdraw its troops from “all cities and populated areas” in Gaza during a six-week truce and provide more aid, according to a Hamas official.
“The cabinet approved the delegation’s departure and authorized negotiations. The delegation will leave today,” Israeli public broadcaster Kan reported on Monday.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
