Israeli special forces storm main hospital in southern Gaza ‘in bid to recover hostages’ remains held by Hamas’

Israeli forces stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza on Thursday, just hours after they killed a patient and wounded six others inside the complex. 

The Israeli army said it was a limited operation seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas, but has not yet revealed exactly whose remains they are seeking. The IDF has also not revealed how many soldiers are currently working to find the remains. 

The raid at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis came a day after the army sought to evacuate thousands of displaced people who had taken shelter there. The southern city has been the main target of Israel’s offensive against Hamas in recent weeks.

While the military said it had ‘credible intelligence’ that Hamas had held hostages at the hospital, the largest in the south of the Gaza Strip, and that the remains of hostages might still be inside, it did not release the evidence it was citing. 

It has since said that it has apprehended a number of suspects during the raid.  

Al Jazeera reported that the IDF gave those in Nasser until 7am local time to leave the hospital, and that as of this morning ‘heavy tank and machine gun fire’ could be heard nearby. 

The outlet reported that the hospital’s maternity ward, orthopaedics unit and emergency room were targeted by IDF soldiers, and that medical staff were rounded up and had ‘their hands tied behind their backs.’ 

Nasser Hospital, in the southern city of Khan Younis, has been the latest focus of operations that have gutted Gaza’s health sector as it struggles to treat scores of patients wounded in daily bombardments. 

Video of the aftermath of last night’s strike, taken by a doctor who works at the hospital, showed medics scrambling to wheel patients on stretchers through a corridor filled with smoke or dust. 

A medic can be seen using the torch on a mobile phone to illuminate a darkened room where a wounded man screamed out in pain as gunfire echoed outside.

At one point in a video gunshots rang out and a doctor shouted ‘Is there anyone still inside? There is gunfire, there is gunfire – heads down’.

Another man in a video said the Israeli army had surrounded the hospital and nobody could get out.

The World Health Organisation has previously said half the medical staff of Nasser Hospital had already fled.

Dr. Khaled Alserr, one of the remaining surgeons at Nasser Hospital, told the AP that the seven patients who were hit early on Thursday morning were already being treated for past wounds. On Wednesday, a doctor was lightly wounded when a drone opened fire on the upper stories of the hospital, he said.

‘The situation is escalating every hour and every minute,’ he said.

The Israeli military said on Wednesday that it had opened a secure corridor for displaced people to leave the hospital but would allow doctors and patients to remain there. 

Videos and images circulating online showed scores of people walking out of the facility on foot carrying their belongings on their shoulders. One image showed a family with many elderly members sat on a cart that was being pulled along by a horse as they travelled from Khan Younis to Rafah. 

Last month, the military had ordered the evacuation of Nasser Hospital and surrounding areas. But as with other health facilities, medics said patients were unable to safely leave or be relocated, and thousands of people displaced by fighting elsewhere remained there. 

Palestinians say nowhere is safe in the besieged territory, as Israel continues to carry out strikes in all parts of it.

‘People have been forced into an impossible situation,’ said Lisa Macheiner of the aid group Doctors Without Borders, which has staff in the hospital.

‘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.’

Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals and other civilian structures to shield its fighters.

Gaza’s Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said Israel had launched a ‘massive incursion’ with heavy shooting that wounded many of the displaced people who had sheltered there. 

He said the military had ordered medics to move all patients into an older building that was not properly equipped for their treatment.

‘Many cannot evacuate, such as those with lower limb amputations, severe burns, or the elderly,’ he said in an interview with the Al Jazeera network.

Separately, Israeli airstrikes killed at least 13 people in southern Lebanon on Wednesday, made up of 10 civilians – mostly women and children – and just three fighters from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, an ally of Gaza’s Hamas militants. 

The strikes came just hours after a rocket attack from Lebanon killed an Israeli soldier in what was the deadliest of daily exchanges of fire along the border since the October 7  start of the war in Gaza. 

Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire along the border nearly every day since the start of the war in Gaza. Hezbollah has not claimed responsibility for Wednesday’s rocket attack. 

Negotiations over a cease-fire in Gaza appear to have stalled, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to continue the offensive until Hamas is destroyed and scores of hostages taken during the October 7 attack that sparked the war are returned.

The war began when Hamas militants burst through Israel’s formidable defences on Black Saturday and rampaged through several communities, killing some 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. 

More than 100 of the captives were freed during a cease-fire last year in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, but around 130 captives remain in Gaza, a fourth of whom are believed to be dead. 

Netanyahu has come under intense pressure from families of the hostages and the wider public to make a deal to secure their freedom, but his far-right coalition partners could bring down his government if he is seen as being too soft on Hamas.

Israel responded to the attack by launching one of the deadliest and most destructive military campaigns in recent history.

Over 28,000 Palestinians have been killed, 80% of the population have fled their homes and a quarter are starving amid a worsening humanitarian catastrophe. 

Large areas in northern Gaza, the first target of the offensive, have been completely destroyed. 

Hamas has continued to attack Israeli forces in all parts of Gaza, and says it will not release all the remaining captives until Israel ends its offensive and withdraws. Hamas is also demanding the release of a large number of Palestinian prisoners, including top militants.

Netanyahu has rejected those demands, calling them ‘delusional,’ and says Israel will soon expand its offensive into Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, on the Egyptian border. 

Over half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million has sought refuge in Rafah after fleeing fighting elsewhere in the coastal enclave.

At least 28,576 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, mostly women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. Over 68,000 people have been wounded in the war.

More to follow.