Nearly 48 hours after coming into Gaza’s largest medical complicated, the Israeli army escorted New York Occasions journalists by a panorama of wartime destruction Thursday night time to a stone-and-concrete shaft on its grounds with a staircase descending into the earth — proof, it mentioned, of a Hamas army facility below the hospital.
However Col. Elad Tsury, commander of Israel’s Seventh Brigade, mentioned Israeli forces, fearing booby traps, had not ventured down the shaft on the hospital, Al-Shifa. He mentioned it had been found earlier within the day below a pile of sand on the northern perimeter of the complicated.
Within the darkness, it was unclear the place the shaft led or how deep it went, although the army mentioned it had despatched a drone down no less than a number of meters. Electrical wiring was seen inside, together with a steel staircase.
The managed go to won’t settle the query of whether or not Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that guidelines Gaza, has been utilizing Al-Shifa Hospital to cover weapons and command facilities, as Israel has said.
The declare is central to Israel’s protection of the dying toll brought on by its army marketing campaign in Gaza, which has killed greater than 11,000 individuals, in line with Gazan well being officers. Israeli officers say that the intense lack of life has been brought on partly by Hamas’s resolution to cover its army fortifications and command facilities inside civilian infrastructure like Al-Shifa.
Hamas denies the accusation and says Israel is committing battle crimes by concentrating on civilian amenities reminiscent of hospitals.
The Israeli army has mentioned that Hamas used an unlimited maze of tunnels beneath the hospital as a secret base, however since announcing early Wednesday that its troops had entered the grounds, the military has yet to present public documentation of such an intensive community. Because the worldwide neighborhood more and more calls for protections for civilians in Gaza, Israel is below stress to show that the hospital — and the tunnel community it mentioned it hid — had been necessary sufficient army targets to justify the immense value in Palestinian lives.
With the intention to enter Gaza, two reporters and a photographer for The New York Occasions had been obliged to stay with Israeli troops at some point of the go to. They agreed to not {photograph} most troopers’ faces, landmarks, maps and sure particulars of weapons. The Occasions didn’t enable the Israeli army to display screen its protection earlier than publication.
The Occasions journalists had been allowed to see solely a portion of the sprawling Al-Shifa complicated. The army refused to let the journalists discover the hospital, or see or interview sufferers and medical workers who stay within the facility, saying it had not been absolutely secured and that Hamas combatants may nonetheless be there.
Earlier than Israel’s raid on Al-Shifa, the World Well being Group mentioned that it had ceased to be a purposeful hospital. Officers described determined circumstances: Meals, drugs and anesthetics had all however run out, and turbines and lifesaving gear had been shut down due to a scarcity of gas. Some three dozen untimely infants had been at explicit danger, they mentioned.
Colonel Tsury mentioned the army had offered meals, provides and medical gear to sufferers and medical doctors, an assertion that would not be instantly verified.
The extent of the harm to the hospital was not totally clear. However its important emergency constructing appeared intact, with electrical energy, after a dayslong siege that well being officers say had resulted in more and more dire circumstances.
Gunfire rattled close by all through The Occasions’s go to, giving the impression of ongoing gun battles in close by streets. To enter the hospital grounds, particular forces officers escorted journalists by the bombed-out stays of a constructing on the outskirts of the location; they mentioned it was too harmful to go by the primary gate.
Away from the hospital, the dimensions of the destruction had rendered components of Gaza unrecognizable. Sections of town’s seafront promenade had been razed to the bottom, residence blocks had been hollowed out by shelling and others flattened by airstrikes. Fixed tank visitors had additionally churned the primary coastal street right into a bumpy dust observe.
