TEL AVIV — Israeli troops have been conducting military operations around a hospital in the Gaza Strip since the morning, Israeli and Palestinian sources said on Friday.
“The Kamal Adwan hospital serves as a stronghold for Hamas terrorists in northern Gaza,” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said in a statement.
Israeli units took action against the Palestinian Islamist militia there and in the surrounding area after it used the hospital for military activities and as a hideout, the IDF said.
Troops were conducting targeted operations in the area “while mitigating harm to uninvolved civilians, patients and medical personnel,” the army wrote on X.
MEANWHILE, a high-ranking employee of the Hamas-controlled health authority in Gaza said troops had forced medical staff and patients to leave the hospital in the northern city of Beit Lahia.
They gathered around 170 people in the hospital courtyard and arrested dozens of them, the employee said.
Palestinian reports cited 350 people, including 170 employees of the hospital, who had been forced to gather in the courtyard.
The IDF emphasized that the people had been evacuated before the operation in cooperation with local health authority staff and international organizations.
Patients were transported by ambulance to other hospitals and Israeli authorities were in constant contact with those responsible for the hospital, the IDF said. The military acted in accordance with international law, it stressed.
According to medical sources in Gaza, there were several casualties during the Israeli operation.
The health authority employee alleged that Israeli soldiers also set fire to parts of the hospital. This led to the destruction of operating theatres, a laboratory and the emergency room, the Palestinian news agency WAFA reported.
The IDF said it was investigating the reports.
Israel’s military already deployed troops in hospitals in Gaza on several occasions with the justification that Hamas was misusing them for its own purposes.
