Israeli army deploys bulldozers at Al-Shifa Hospital: Palestinian health ministry.
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip said Thursday that the Israeli army had deployed bulldozers at the Al-Shifa hospital, which Israel has said sits above a Hamas command center.
“Israeli bulldozers destroyed parts of the southern entrance” to the hospital, the ministry said in a brief statement in Arabic.
The Israeli army told AFP that an operation was currently underway at the hospital complex.
“Tonight we conducted a targeted operation into Shifa hospital. We continue to move forward,” Major General Yaron Finkelman, head of Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip, said on the army’s Telegram channel.
The army carried out an operation at Al-Shifa on Wednesday, sparking serious international concern and criticism.
A journalist in contact with AFP, trapped inside the hospital, said soldiers shot in the air and ordered young men to surrender when they burst into the hospital overnight.
By early evening, Israeli troops had withdrawn from the facility, the journalist said, redeploying around the hospital.
Both Israel and its top ally the United States said the Palestinian militants have a command center below the Al-Shifa complex, a charge denied by Hamas and directors at the hospital, which has become a focal point in the 40-day-old war.
The Israeli army said troops had found “military and combat equipment” inside the compound during Wednesday’s operation, a claim the Gaza health ministry denied.
The Palestinian authority said Israeli soldiers destroyed medical equipment which is not available elsewhere in Gaza and detained two engineers who worked on the hospital’s oxygen and power supplies.
The Palestinian health ministry reported that the number of civilians killed since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank on October 7, has surged to 11,517, in addition to around 32,000 injured, according to Palestinian news agency WAFA.
“The operation is shaped by our understanding that there is well-hidden terrorist infrastructure in the complex,” the official said, declining to be named.
Hamas weapons and equipment had been found in Al-Shifa, the official said, adding that “Hamas has persistently worked to conceal infrastructure and cover up evidence” in Gaza’s hospitals. Hamas has denied operating out of medical facilities.
Israel should be held accountable for Al-Shifa Hospital raid: Saudi foreign ministry
The ministry said in a statement shared on platform X that the Kingdom denounces and rejects Israel’s raid on Al-Shifa Hospital a day earlier as well as the bombing of the vicinity of the Jordanian field hospital.
“The Kingdom emphasizes the need to activate international accountability mechanisms as a result of the continuous violations and the brutal and inhumane acts by the Israeli occupation forces against children, women, civilians, medical facilities and rescue teams,” the ministry said.
It added that such acts are “a blatant violation to the international humanitarian law and all international norms and charters and an explicit targeting of civilians and medical staff.”
Israeli forces raided the Al-Shifa Hospital in the early hours of Wednesday after claiming that Hamas militants have a command center beneath the premises.
Automatic weapons, grenades, ammunition and flak jackets were recovered from an undisclosed building within the complex, the Israeli army said after the raid.
The hospital has been a refuge for many civilians sheltering at the facility in the aftermath of the Israeli war on Gaza that came after Hamas militants stormed across the Israeli border on October 7 and carried out an attack that left 1,200 people dead.
Retaliatory Israeli strikes on Gaza have killed 11,500 people, including at least 4,710 children and 3,160 women.
The dire situation in the Gaza Strip prompted the United Nations Security Council to eventually adopt a resolution on Wednesday evening calling for an urgent pause in fighting for several days to allow access of humanitarian aid.
In a separate statement on Thursday, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry welcomed the vote, saying it was “the first move in the right direction” by the international community in order to take action and hold Israeli forces accountable for its actions.
Israeli army drops leaflets telling people in east of Gaza’s Khan Younis to evacuate.
In the north of the Hamas-ruled Palestinian enclave, Israel said its forces were still present at Gaza’s biggest hospital, Al-Shifa, but gave no further details of their operations since the previous day when they entered the facility culminating a days-long siege.
Reuters was unable to verify the situation at Al-Shifa on Thursday morning, having lost contact with doctors inside it since Wednesday.
Leaflets dropped overnight from aircraft told civilians to leave the towns of Bani Shuhaila, Khuzaa, Abassan and Qarara, on the eastern edge of Khan Younis, the main southern city. The towns, collectively home to more than 100,000 people in peacetime, are now sheltering tens of thousands more who fled other areas.
“The acts of Hamas terrorist group require the defense forces to act against them in the areas of your residence,” the leaflets said. “For your safety, you need to evacuate your places of residence immediately and head to known shelters.”
Residents said the area came under heavy bombardment overnight.
Israel has already ordered the evacuation of the entire northern half of Gaza before sending in its ground forces at the end of October. Long processions of people clutching just a few possessions have made their way south each day under the eyes of Israeli soldiers during six-hour “tactical pauses” to allow residents to leave.
The United Nations says around two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been made homeless, most of them sheltering in towns in the south, since Israel began retaliation against Hamas for a deadly rampage in southern Israeli towns.
Hamas militants burst through the fence around Gaza on October 7 in an assault that Israel says killed 1,200 people in the deadliest day in its history. Around 240 hostages were dragged back to Gaza.
Since then, Israel has pounded Gaza with air strikes and cut off food and fuel. Gaza health authorities deemed reliable by the United Nations say more than 11,000 people have been confirmed killed, more than 40 percent of them children, with many more feared trapped under rubble of bombed out homes.