Watch: Israel storms hospital in Khan Younis used as ‘Hamas terror hub’

Israeli special forces stormed one of the few remaining hospitals in southern Gaza on Thursday, claiming Hamas had used it as a base and was keeping the bodies of dead hostages there.

Verified footage on social media showed medical workers at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis rushing a patient on a bed through the smoke-filled corridors of a facility that appears to have been heavily damaged by shelling. Another video shows a patient being carried away in a blanket while shots can be heard being fired.

The Israeli military defended the raid as “precise and limited”. It insisted it had “credible evidence” from several sources, including the released hostages, that Hamas had held captives inside the hospital and may still be keeping the remains of some dead Israelis there.

The military had ordered the evacuation of Nasser Hospital and surrounding areas last month, with the Israeli Defence Forces saying doctors and patients were free to stay and would not be forcibly evacuated.

But thousands of displaced people with nowhere else to go, as well as doctors and patients unable to move, had remained in the compound.

Doctors treating intensive care patients, including six people on ventilators, were told to move to an old hospital building nearby, the Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said.

The army was searching several of the facility’s buildings, said Shaban Tabash, a nurse at the hospital. Doctors were unable to provide treatment to the patients in the building, which was not properly equipped, he added. “The situation of patients is difficult,” he told the Associated Press (AP).

Nasser Hospital came under sustained Israeli shelling in the early hours of Thursday morning.

One strike hit a hospital ward, killing one patient and wounding six others, all of whom were already being treated for previous wounds, Dr Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons at Nasser Hospital, told AP.

“Since the midnight hours, violent shelling and severe explosions have continued in the vicinity of the complex,” Nahed Abu-Teima, Nasser Hospital’s director, told BBC Arabic.

Conditions are “catastrophic and very dangerous”, he said, adding that the only patients remaining in the hospital “cannot move or cannot walk”.

By Thursday afternoon, Israeli troops had reportedly “stormed” the maternity ward, destroyed Nasser’s ambulance station and bulldozed improvised graves on the hospital grounds, according to the health ministry.

An Israeli tank was also seen ramming through one of the hospital’s walls and advancing into the complex.

Israel has had the hospital in its crosshairs ever since a freed hostage said in an interview last month that most of her time in captivity in Gaza was spent there. Sharon Cunio, who was released in a deal with Hamas last November, told AP she was moved to that hospital in an ambulance after spending a few days at a private home.

Israel’s Channel 12 said later on Thursday that families of the Israeli hostages were told there is no confirmation that their relatives’ bodies could be found at the hospital.

Israel has also accused Hamas of using the hospital as a hub for its military activities. International law prohibits the targeting of medical facilities, but they can lose those protections if they are used for military purposes.

The group “systematically uses hospitals as terror hubs”, said Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, alleging that 85 per cent of all the medical facilities in the sealed-off territory “have been used for terror operations”.

Mr Hagari said several suspects had been detained in the operation. Local media reports named a doctor and a journalist among the detainees. Hamas responded by calling the terror hub allegations “lies”.

Later on Thursday evening, Mr Hagari added that the army “have not yet found any evidence” of hostages’ bodies, but that forces had found “weapons, grenades and mortar bombs” in the hospital complex.

The same charge was levelled during Israel’s assault on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City late last year. Some 15 people were reported to be killed in an airstrike on the facility and more than 40 patients died after the intensive care unit ran out of oxygen.

Photos and videos from the premises after they were captured by the IDF last November showed a number of weapons and flak jackets, but nothing indicating the sophisticated nerve centre Israel claimed it to be.

However, The New York Times this week cited classified Israeli intelligence revealing the presence of a 700ft tunnel underneath Al Shifa allegedly used exclusively by Hamas, including underground bunkers and living quarters underneath the hospital.

Separately, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak spoke to his counterpart Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday and urged him to fully open the Kerem Shalom crossing to allow aid deliveries into Gaza.

“The Prime Minister highlighted the scale of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza,” a statement from Downing Street said.

Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which has staff members currently inside Nasser Hospital, said the same day that an “undetermined number” of people had been killed and injured in the shelling and that one of their doctors went missing.

MSF called on Israel to stop the operation immediately. “Our medical staff have had to flee the hospital, leaving patients behind,” they said in a statement, adding that one of their doctors was detained during security screening by the IDF outside the hospital.

“People have been forced into an impossible situation,” added Lisa Macheiner, an MSF project coordinator in Gaza.

“Stay at Nasser Hospital against the Israeli military’s orders and become a potential target or exit the compound into an apocalyptic landscape where bombings and evacuation orders are a part of daily life.”