Israeli troops bomb and assault Gaza's main operational hospital

This Thursday, the Israeli army attacked and occupied the Al Naser hospital in Khan Younis, the main center still operating in Gaza's battered health network.

The health authorities, controlled by Hamas, and Doctors Without Borders (MSF) have denounced the bombings, which have left people dead and injured, although the number has yet to be determined.

Israel recognizes that its troops are operating at the Al Naser hospital as part of the campaign to end Hamas and because they believe that these facilities could have been used to hold hostages.

Even, they add, some of the bodies of those kidnapped who have already died could be found in the facilities, although so far they have not shown evidence.

The deaths in Gaza due to Israeli attacks since the war began on October 7 are close to 29,000, the vast majority women and children.

More information

War between Israel and Gaza: summary of 02/15/2024

Some doctors and witnesses were able to record the moments after some of the impacts.

In the videos you can see corridors and rooms full of smoke and staff transporting patients.

In several images, soldiers are also seen inside the hospital with dozens of people kneeling, both health workers and other civilians.

The attack took place after Israel ordered the evacuation of thousands of people from the hospital last Tuesday.

The bombing reported by MSF occurred in the early hours of Thursday, “despite the fact that Israeli forces had told medical staff and patients that they could remain in the center,” the humanitarian organization reported in a statement.

The NGO added that troops carry out operations inside the facilities and that its team had to escape, leaving patients behind.

One of the members of the mission was detained by the Israeli military and another remains missing.

They describe a “chaotic situation, with an unknown number of dead and injured.”

Screenshots from inside the Al Naser hospital in Khan Yunis, showing men blocking a door and wounded people being treated by the centre's staff.@mohammedharar / Reuters

In the attack, Israel also used drones which, according to the spokesman for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, Ashraf Al-Qedra, fired at the surgery department, on the third floor, causing injuries to one of the doctors.

The facilities, according to this source, have been converted into a military barracks, after troops demolished the southern wall, even forcing doctors to abandon patients from the intensive care wing.

The operation has also affected ambulances, the tents where the displaced population takes refuge and even the graves where bodies have been buried due to the impossibility of transferring them to cemeteries.

This is an operation that the special forces carry out with “precision,” Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari explained in a video, noting that they have not forced the evacuation of the hospital.

For its part, the Palestinian Red Crescent "strongly rejected the accusations made by the Israeli occupation forces" that "20 terrorists disguised as medical personnel" had been arrested on February 9 at another Gaza hospital, Al Amal, when they broke into his quarters.

This organization does acknowledge that nine members of its team who had been working for it for years and nine patients who had not been able to be evacuated were detained.

Al Amal, along with other hospitals such as Shifi or Rantisi, is part of the health centers in Gaza that have been assaulted and taken over by Israeli troops, who maintain that these places were used by Hamas.

This Thursday it was revealed that the head of the American CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), William Burns, traveled to Israel on Wednesday from Egypt, where the negotiating countries' attempts to achieve a ceasefire continue.

Burns met, according to several Israeli media, with the Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and with the head of the Mossad (foreign spy service), David Barnea, in an attempt to unblock the Israeli president's refusal to continue holding meetings in the Egyptian capital to achieve a cessation of hostilities.

Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip, has been militarily occupied since the end of last year and the Israeli army marks the city as a stronghold of the Islamists.

He even places the leader of Hamas in the Strip, Yahia Sinwar, in the tunnels drilled in that town, of whom he showed this week a video of the first days of the war along with some members of his family.

In these months of conflict, Israeli forces have supposedly been on the verge of capturing him on several occasions, according to the local press, which reported the discovery of some of his personal belongings, such as a toothbrush.

Sinwar is considered the intellectual person responsible for the attacks that caused some 1,200 deaths in Israel on October 7, opening the spigot of the current war.

A dozen kilometers south of Khan Yunis is the town of Rafah, where more than a million people, most of them displaced without homes, crowd along the Egyptian border without being able to flee further.

The enormous humanitarian crisis due to the lack of food, water, medicine or shelter due to the blockade that Israel subjects the Palestinian enclave to has raised all the alarms with the announcement of a troop incursion into Rafah, the only area they have left to occupy. from Gaza.

In an attempt to stop this operation, whose results would be catastrophic, according to the UN and various humanitarian organizations, the three main mediating countries (USA, Qatar and Egypt) maintain delegations in Cairo trying to achieve a ceasefire.

So far, the positions of Hamas and Israel remain very far apart.

This cessation of hostilities, which Washington intends to be for six weeks, would allow exchanges of Hamas hostages for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails to be carried out, as already happened in the last week of November, and, at the same time, would give more leeway to try to end the feud.

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