Israeli soldiers simulate close-quarters combat in terrorist tunnels. (Israel Defense Forces)
Israel’s days-long raid inside Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza has collapsed services and swept up scores of people — including patients and doctors — in mass arrests, the Gaza Health Ministry and a senior U.N. official said.
The hospital in the city of Khan Younis is the largest in southern Gaza, but it “is not functional anymore,” the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said Sunday, calling for access to the patients.
He said a WHO team sent to deliver fuel and assess medical needs was barred from entering the facility on Friday and Saturday, “despite reaching the hospital compound,” where about 200 patients remain.
“The cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives,” he said, adding that at least 20 people needed to be “urgently referred to other hospitals to receive health care.”
The raid is Israel’s latest military operation against a major health care facility in Gaza, where at least 28,985 people have been killed and 68,883 injured since the war began on Oct. 7, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The attacks have crippled the enclave’s beleaguered medical system, forcing doctors and staff to treat trauma injuries on the floor, operate without anesthesia, and watch as critical patients die when the power goes out and their oxygen depletes.
Seven patients at Nasser Hospital died after Israeli troops stormed the complex on Friday and a power outage shut off the oxygen, Ashraf al-Qudra, a spokesman for the Gaza Health Ministry, said in a statement Sunday.
Israel has turned the hospital complex “into a military barracks and put it out of service,” he said, adding that the Israeli military arrested 70 members of the hospital’s staff.
The Israel Defense Forces overran Nasser Hospital to recover the bodies of hostages it believed were being held there, spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said, and to halt militant activity the IDF alleged was taking place on hospital grounds.
Israeli forces have not yet found the bodies of any hostages but said on Sunday that they discovered medicine at the hospital bearing the names of Israelis who were abducted by Hamas. Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant also said Sunday that “200 terrorists” had surrendered at the hospital, without offering details.
A later IDF statement said “hundreds of terrorists and terror suspects” were apprehended and then “transferred to undergo further investigations by security forces.”
Israel’s military has detained hundreds of Palestinians — both combatants and civilians — in Gaza and imprisoned them without charge inside Israel under a secretive legal framework. Some have been released and described ill-treatment and abuse at the detention centers.
Qudra said Sunday that the IDF arrested Nasser Hospital’s intensive care doctor, leaving no qualified physicians to follow up on critical cases. Dozens of immobile patients were also detained and moved to military beds inside trucks, then taken elsewhere, he said.
Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an IDF spokesman, said Sunday that to his knowledge, “the hospital was up and running” and that staff members were working on fixing a malfunction in the main generator, “which wasn’t due to our activity there.” He added that fuel and oxygen were delivered to Nasser Hospital yesterday.
“It’s in our best interest that the hospital will keep functioning,” he said.
Here’s what else to know
Israel’s government unanimously approved a declaration Sunday that says Israel will continue not to recognize a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he submitted the decision “in light of remarks that have been heard recently in the international community about an attempt to unilaterally force a Palestinian state on Israel.” The Biden administration and a handful of Middle East partners are rushing to introduce a peace plan between Israel and the Palestinians, including a timeline for the establishment of a Palestinian state.
President Biden has had “multiple calls” with Netanyahu and the leaders of Egypt and Qatar in the hope of bringing a “sustainable resolution” to the conflict, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said in a statement. The update came in response to a U.N. Security Council resolution drafted by Algeria that called for an immediate cease-fire. She said that if the resolution were to come up for a vote, Washington would not support it.
Netanyahu said further negotiations over a cease-fire to release hostages from Gaza were pointless given what he called Hamas’s “delusional demands,” which include Israel’s withdrawal from Gaza and the release of Palestinians from Israeli prisons. “Clearly, we will not agree to them,” he said Saturday.
Masih reported from Seoul, Hassan from London, Hendrix from Jerusalem, Dadouch from Beirut and Lior Soroka from Tel Aviv.
