The Israeli army says it is carrying out a “precise and targeted” ground operation at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza

The Israeli army said it was carrying out a “precise and directed operation against Hamas in a specific area.” Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza Early Wednesday morning. The Israeli army said in a statement that the ground operation, which was based on intelligence information and the “necessity of the operation,” came after the Israeli army repeatedly warned Hamas against using the hospital as a base for its operations.

The Israeli army said it was “conducting searches for Hamas’ terrorist infrastructure and weapons” and providing “humanitarian aid to the hospital entrance.”

“Yesterday, the IDF once again informed the relevant authorities in Gaza that all military activities inside the hospital must stop within 12 hours. Unfortunately, this did not happen,” the IDF said, adding that Hamas’s alleged military use of the hospital amounted to a “threat.” “. Violation of international law.

CBS News partner BBC News quoted an eyewitness at the hospital as saying that once inside the hospital compound, Israeli forces asked all men between the ages of 16 and 40 who were not in emergency or surgical departments to gather in the hospital courtyard. And passing through the scanning device.

The eyewitness told the BBC that Israeli forces took complete control of the hospital complex, and searched people from room to room to interrogate them. However, a senior Israeli defense official told reporters that IDF forces were only operating in one specific area of ​​the hospital, though he did not say which area.

Israel’s announcement of the movement of ground forces came the next day President Biden said “Hospitals in the Gaza Strip must be protected” and he expressed “his hope and expectation that there will be less interference with regard to hospitals” in the coastal strip.

Al-Shifa Hospital is located in the heart of Gaza City and has been at the center of a tense confrontation for several days. Israel accuses Hamas of owning an underground headquarters under the hospital, which Hamas and the Shifa doctors deny.

Concern is growing for patients in the hospital, which was cut off from electricity over the weekend due to a lack of fuel needed to operate electrical generators. Israel did not allow fuel to enter the Gaza Strip, claiming that it was monopolized by Hamas.

Dozens of children had to be removed from their incubators at Al-Shifa Hospital and were photographed laying on aluminum foil and blankets to keep warm. the Israeli Defense Army He said Wednesday They delivered new incubators to Al-Shifa, which she told CBS News can operate on battery power for at least a few hours.

Israeli and American officials stressed that Hamas has a long history of placing weapons and fighters in civilian homes, schools and hospitals. National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby said on Tuesday that the United States has “information that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are using some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including Al-Shifa Hospital, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and support their military operations and hostage-taking.”

Kirby said Hamas and its allies in the Palestinian Islamic Jihad movement were running a “command and control complex” from Shifa, adding: “To be clear, we do not support striking a hospital from the air nor do we want to see.” A gun battle in a hospital where innocent people, helpless people and patients trying to get the medical care they deserve are caught in the crossfire. Hospitals and patients must be protected.

The Israeli army said that its forces participating in the operation included medical teams and Arabic speakers “who underwent specific training to prepare for this complex and sensitive environment, with the aim of not causing any harm to civilians who Hamas uses as human shields.”

Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht said on Wednesday that forces engaged in an exchange of fire outside the hospital before entering Al-Shifa Hospital. He added that the soldiers were fired upon first, but added that no deaths were confirmed on either side of the exchange of fire.

The Israeli defense official who briefed reporters later said that forces encountered and neutralized four gunmen as they moved into the compound, and that they quickly found weapons and other evidence that Hamas, as Israel has long insisted, is using the hospital as a terrorist base. The official said the evidence would be made public.

UN humanitarian and health agencies expressed urgent concern on Wednesday over reports that the ground war between Israel and Hamas had moved into the grounds of the overcrowded healthcare facility, with the humanitarian relief coordinator. Martin Griffiths says on social media He expressed his “shock at reports of military raids on Al-Shifa Hospital,” adding that “protecting newborns, patients, medical staff, and all civilians must transcend all other concerns. Hospitals are not battlefields.”

Director of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom called Ghebreyesus News of the incursion is “deeply worrying” and said the UN health agency “has again lost contact with health workers at the hospital. We are deeply concerned for their safety and the safety of their patients.”

agitationIsrael, which has controlled Gaza for nearly two decades, launched an unprecedented terrorist attack on Israel on October 7 from the Strip, prompting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to declare that his country was “at war.” Israel says at least 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the coordinated, multi-front offensive, and Hamas took about 240 people hostage in Gaza.

Netanyahu said a ceasefire would only be possible if the hostages were released, but Israel’s punitive response has divided the international community.

More than 11,070 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and minors, have been killed since the war began, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza, which does not distinguish between civilian and militant deaths. The ministry said about 2,700 people were considered missing and many were believed to be trapped or dead under the rubble in Gaza, which has been subjected to Israeli air strikes since October 7.

The United Nations estimates that about 1.5 million people – more than two-thirds of Gaza’s population – have fled the intense fighting in northern Gaza towards the south. Meanwhile, some 250,000 Israelis were forced to evacuate from communities near Gaza and along the northern border with Lebanon, where Israeli forces and Hezbollah militants repeatedly exchanged fire.

—Camilla Schick, Margaret Brennan contributed reporting.