Israel says video reveals Hamas forcing hostages into Al-Shifa Hospital

Israel sought to bolster its case that Hamas makes use of Gaza’s principal hospital as a militant base by releasing video Sunday night time of what it says are tunnels beneath the medical advanced, and — for the primary time — hostages being taken there by the militant group.

Two of the clips present what Israel says are Hamas militants forcing hostages into the premises of Al-Shifa Hospital on the morning of the Oct. 7 terror assault. NBC Information used archive pictures to verify that the primary clip does present the reception space of the hospital. Each are time-stamped simply earlier than 11 a.m. Oct. 7. though NBC Information can not verify the accuracy of those timestamps, when the movies have been taken or who seems in them.

At a information convention Sunday night time, officers additionally launched photos of what it stated have been Hamas fighters taking captured Israeli navy autos to the hospital on the identical day. In addition they launched footage which they stated confirmed an underground tunnel beneath Al-Shifa.

The movie was overlaid with pc graphics labeling the environment, and appeared to point out the tunnel with strengthened partitions, a spiral metallic ladder and a blast door. Hamas has denied constructing tunnels beneath medical services. 

The IDF additionally stated that an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Noa Marciano, whose physique was present in Gaza final week, was in reality killed by Hamas at Al-Shifa. The militant group had claimed she was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

NBC Information has not verified the claims.

The footage is Israel’s newest effort to hyperlink Hamas to hospital services following worldwide condemnation of Israeli assaults and raids which have killed medical doctors, sufferers and civilians who had sought shelter there. America has supported its evaluation that Hamas makes use of the hospitals as cowl, though medical doctors on the facility and Hamas have denied it.

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The pictures “show that the Shifa Hospital was used as terrorist infrastructure,” stated a joint assertion issued Sunday night time by the Israel Protection Drive and the Israel Safety Company.

The Palestinian Well being Ministry stated the movies of hostages being taken to Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital confirmed that medical doctors there present “medical providers to everybody who wants them, no matter their gender and race.”

Hamas dismissed the importance of the video, saying it had overtly transferred a few of its prisoners to hospitals after they have been wounded by Israeli airstrikes.

The militant group, which is banned as a terrorist group in america and Europe, launched the shock assault Oct. 7 through which Israel says 1,200 folks have been killed and round 240 others kidnapped. Greater than 10 weeks of Israeli airstrikes and floor assault following the assault have killed greater than 13,000 Palestinians and displaced greater than 1.6 million within the Gaza Strip, in keeping with well being officers within the besieged enclave.

Israel’s assaults on hospitals have been one of many principal contested narratives of the battle. The navy claims Hamas operated a command middle beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, which each Hamas and hospital employees members have denied. Its assaults on this and different medical services, ostensibly to focus on these militants however through which sufferers and medical employees have been killed, have been closely criticized by humanitarian companies as battle crimes.

Israel has carried out  a public relations offensive to attempt to show its case, though a few of its claims have been disputed and solely raised additional questions of the legitimacy of its techniques.

However, the footage launched Sunday “is kind of damning for Hamas,” within the opinion of Michael A. Horowitz, a Jerusalem-based analyst who’s the pinnacle of intelligence at Le Beck Worldwide, a risk-management consultancy targeted on the Center East.

“Hamas may have gone to any variety of hospitals which can be nearer to the border, if the aim was simply to offer medical help to the hostages — a few of whom don’t appear critically injured,” he stated. “The truth that they introduced them particularly to the Shifa hospital, even when they did so briefly, means they felt very assured no data would leak out.”

Within the first video, 4 folks in plainclothes, at the least one in all whom is armed with what seems to be like an automated rifle, pull one other individual into the hospital, as employees and different bystanders again away in obvious shock. That video is time-stamped at 10:53 a.m. (3:53 a.m. ET).

In a second clip timestamped lower than two minutes later, round a dozen folks crowd round an injured individual being introduced in on a gurney. 4 of the group are carrying medical scrubs, and one in all them directs the affected person, who seems to be bleeding from the arm or abdomen, into one other unseen room. 

In the remainder of the group, who usually are not carrying medical clothes, at the least two are carrying what seems to be automated rifles. A number of the folks bear shut resemblance to these seen within the first video, and various them are in what seems to be heated discussions with the medical doctors.

A clock on the wall reveals the time as simply after 4 p.m., though the second hand just isn’t shifting, suggesting the clock is damaged and this time just isn’t correct. The IDF and the Israel Safety Company  stated these photos present “hostages kidnapped from Israeli territory,” one Nepalese and one Thai nationwide, who’re “seen surrounded by armed Hamas terrorists,” who’re “forcibly transporting” them into the constructing.

“These findings show that the Hamas terrorist group used the Shifa Hospital advanced on the day of the bloodbath as terrorist infrastructure,” it stated, and that the movies added to “earlier proof introduced concerning Hamas’ use of the hospital space as infrastructure for its terrorist actions in a scientific and ongoing method.”

The Palestinian Well being Ministry within the impoverished and densely populated Gaza Strip, an enclave run by Hamas, stated that the movies launched by Israel merely confirmed medical doctors treating sufferers no matter who they’re.

“If what was said within the video was correct, because of this the hospital offered the required service by means of one of the best portal, which is intensive care,” it stated in a press release. It added that Israel “bears full accountability for the deterioration and collapse of well being providers” in Gaza, “which ends up in tons of of wounded and sick folks dying, who may have been handled and their lives being saved.”

Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ political wing, stated on the messaging app Telegram that his group has all the time stated that it  “transferred lots of the occupation’s prisoners to hospitals to obtain therapy,” particularly “after a few of them have been injured because of the occupation’s plane bombing them.”