The Israeli military raided the largest hospital still operating in the Gaza Strip on Thursday in what it called a search for Hamas fighters and bodies of hostages. Many people who had sought refuge there were forced to flee the battle once again.
Explosions and gunfire rocked the hospital in Khan Younis city, the Nasser Medical Complex, before the pre-dawn raid, killing and wounding several people, including at least one doctor and a patient, according to a doctor there, as well as the charity Doctors Without Borders, who had staff members at the hospital, and Gaza health authorities. Specific claims of casualties, like many claims in the conflict, could not be immediately confirmed.
Videos posted on social media on Thursday and voice messages sent by medics overnight, both before and after Israeli forces smashed through the perimeter wall and entered the compound, depict scenes of chaos and fear inside the devastated, smoke-filled hospital, with occasional automatic fire, explosions and shouts.
A video, verified by The New York Times, showed damage to the hospital and injured people being rushed through a smoke-filled corridor amid the debris amid the sound of gunfire. Witnesses said hundreds of people – possibly thousands – later stood in long lines as Israeli troops checked them in, a few at a time, to evacuate.
The Israeli military said it had arrested dozens of people, but did not say who or why.
“We have reliable information from various sources, including the freed hostages, indicating that Hamas was holding hostages at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and that there may be bodies of our hostages at the Nasser Hospital facility,” Vice Admiral Daniel Hagari, said the head Israeli army spokesman in a video statement.
The military did not say whether hostages or Hamas fighters were found. Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the health ministry in Gaza, said Israeli forces had used bulldozers to dig graves at the hospital.
For two days before the raid, Israeli forces surrounding the medical center had been telling evacuees over loudspeakers to leave, signaling that a raid was about to take place, although international rights groups and medical groups warned of dire consequences. Some of the Palestinians who took refuge there did leave, but others said it was too dangerous – some tried and said gunfire and airstrikes forced them to turn back.
Doctors and health officials said some people who tried to escape on Tuesday were killed. Reached for comment, the Israeli military did not respond to specific allegations of people being shot.
“We really don’t know what to do,” said a local journalist, Mohamed Salama, in a video posted Wednesday on social media. In the background, people lined up with bags of belongings to leave the hospital, but he said people who tried to evacuate were forced to stand in checkpoint lines for hours.
The Israeli military said Thursday it had opened a “humanitarian corridor” for people leaving the hospital, but even then witnesses who fled said it was a harrowing and dangerous experience.
Gaza officials said about 300 medics, 450 injured patients and 8,000 people displaced from their homes elsewhere in the territory were in the hospital when the week began. It was unclear how many were still there as of Thursday morning.
While trying to crush Hamas in Gaza, Israel also faces a conflict with Hezbollah, an Iranian-backed group based in Lebanon, which has stepped up rocket fire against Israel in solidarity with Hamas. The two sides have traded dozens of attacks on Israel’s northern border since October, and both have threatened further escalation. US officials have advised calm, trying to avoid opening a full second front in the war.
Israeli forces carried out multiple airstrikes in Lebanon on Thursday, a day after a series of raids that Lebanese state media said killed 10 civilians and that Hezbollah killed several of its fighters.
The raid on the Nasser hospital was “a precise and limited operation,” carried out by “special forces that underwent special training for this mission,” Admiral Hagari said. Israeli forces had not told patients or medical staff to leave, he added, saying Israel actually wanted the hospital to continue operating.
However, according to multiple reports, most of the doctors and patients evacuated. Mr Salama said Israeli troops were telling the doctors to leave, although not by the same route as others. Doctors Without Borders said in a statement, “our medical staff were forced to leave the hospital, leaving the patients behind” and that “one of our colleagues was detained” by the Israelis.
Dr. Islam Sawaly, a doctor in Nasser, said she and a group of others left the hospital around 3 a.m. and walked for more than four hours on a dark, potholed road. “We fell into sewage ditches,” he said. Eventually, they reached the Miraj area, between Khan Younis and Rafah, the city along the Egyptian border where more than a million Gazans have sought refuge.
Doctors Without Borders said only the sickest patients had been left behind in Nasser, although the number was unclear. In voice memos shared by the group, a doctor at the hospital, whose name was withheld for his safety, said Israeli troops had ordered all remaining staff and patients into one building, the oldest in the complex, and that there were only about 40 employees left.
Before the raid began, a rocket hit the hospital at about 2 a.m., killing one patient in his bed and injuring six others, the doctor said in the voicemail. Dr Sawaly said another rocket attack killed a doctor and left two other people with burns, although Gaza health officials said the doctor was wounded but not killed.
Hospitals have been a flashpoint throughout the war that began with a Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, which Israeli officials say killed about 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages, more than 130 of whom are believed to be still held in Gaza. Talks brokered by Egypt and Qatar on a ceasefire and the release of the remaining hostages are underway this week in Cairo, but the two sides appear to be far apart.
Israel has faced widespread international condemnation for its conduct in the war, which has killed more than 28,000 people in Gaza, health authorities there say, and destroyed much of the enclave’s infrastructure. Much of this criticism has focused on attacks on hospitals, mosques and schools, which are supposed to be protected by the laws of war.
Israel has long accused Hamas, which has ruled Gaza since 2007, of using such places as de facto military bases and civilians there as human shields – a violation of international law – betting they are less likely to be directly targeted. In some cases, the Israelis argue, beneath these facilities are important hubs in Hamas’ vast network of tunnels. Hamas and the hospital administration deny the allegations.
Most of Gaza’s hospitals have ceased to function as hospitals. Those that are still overcrowded, many damaged and lacking critical supplies. Israel says it has secured the delivery of essential supplies to Nasser. The United Nations says Israel has blocked such deliveries.
Israel has repeatedly ordered civilian evacuations, starting in northern Gaza and moving south, displacing many people multiple times and steadily forcing them into more crowded areas. Palestinians and aid groups say that amid falling bombs, street fighting and scarce supplies, there is no safe place in Gaza.
Khan Younis, one of southern Gaza’s major cities, has been at the center of ground fighting for weeks and Israeli officials describe it as a Hamas stronghold.
More than half of Gaza’s estimated 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Rafah, many sleeping in makeshift shelters and tents. Israeli officials said the army would eventually enter Rafah in force as well.
The report was made by Rawan Sheikh Ahmad from Haifa, Israel; Amera Harouda from Doha, Qatar. Patrick Kingsley from Jerusalem, Adam Sella from Tel Aviv, Euan Ward from Beirut and Richard Pérez-Peña from New York.
