Israeli Occupation military raids Shifa Medical Complex, where thousands were sheltering from military siege

“The Israeli occupation military blew up the drug warehouse,” said a person speaking to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity from the Shifa Medical Complex on Wednesday morning. “They conducted searches of the displaced inside the emergency department and demanded, through loudspeakers, that the rest of the displaced in the other departments surrender themselves.”

During the early hours of Wednesday, Occupation forces invaded the Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the largest medical facility in Gaza, where thousands of medical staff, patients and displaced people were taking shelter. Military forces entered through the western side, where the Department of Internal Medicine and Nephrology building is located, according to a local source who spoke to Mada Masr on condition of anonymity.

Shifa Hospital has been under siege for three days, surrounded by Occupation forces, with medical staff, displaced and wounded Palestinians fearful of leaving the premises with Israeli forces stationed in the surroundings and amid reports that people were wounded in gunfire and airstrikes in the vicinity of the hospital.

The entire Shifa complex covers an area of about 45,000 square meters in Gaza City, and includes an outpatient building, surgery buildings, reception, emergency, obstetrics and intensive care departments, nurseries, surgery buildings, internal and kidney diseases, radiology and blood bank, in addition to the planning department.

“There are around 9,000 people, including medical staff, displaced, and wounded people inside the complex,” a wounded person on the premises told Mada Masr. They added that the Occupation army gathered some of the people in the complex in the eastern square to search them and check their identities.

"They are searching every area, including the garbage. They also cut off communications inside and took our phones."

Several medical sources who spoke to BBC and Al Jazeera also reported multiple violations they witnessed as the complex was raided and controlled by the occupation army.

“Occupation forces ordered men between 16 and 40 years, except [those] in the surgery and emergency departments, to leave the hospital building and gather in the square, where they ordered the displaced to gather, and fired bullets in the air to force those who did not leave [out],” a journalist inside the hospital reportedly told the BBC.

He added that everyone was searched and that the Israeli Occupation forces installed a scanner and ordered the men to pass through it.

At the same time, Occupation forces detained a number of medical staff and displaced and wounded people in unknown places after “stripping and severely beating some of them,” according to medical sources speaking on Al Jazeera.

The Occupation intensified airstrikes on the complex and its surroundings before the raid, injuring some of the patients in the intensive care department and killing some, Emergency Supervisor Omar Zaqout told Al Jazeera.

In condemnation of the series of violations that took place, the government media office described the raid on Shifa Hospital as "a war crime, a moral crime and a crime against humanity." 

“The reports of a military incursion in the complex [are] deeply worrying,” the director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, said on Wednesday, noting that they have lost contact with health workers at the Shifa Medical Complex.

However, US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, claimed, aboard Air Force One on Tuesday afternoon, that Hamas was using the hospital to run military actions, saying that the US had obtained information to that effect via various intelligence methods.

“Hamas actions [do] not lessen Israel’s responsibilities to protect civilians in Gaza,” Kirby said, adding that the group’s tactics complicate Israel’s military operations, according to Reuters.

This is the first time the US has claimed that its own intelligence confirms Hamas' presence in Shifa hospital. Israel has long put forward the claim that Hamas uses hospitals as “human shields” and that a command center exists under Shifa hospital in particular, intensifying the allegations over recent days. Hamas has consistently denied the accusation, however, and no conclusive proof of the group’s presence at Shifa hospital or any other health facility has been published thus far.

Hamas reportedly described the US’ statement as a green light for the Israeli military to storm Shifa and the rest of Gaza's hospitals.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra reiterated on Wednesday that the ministry is ready to “receive all UN institutions in the Shifa complex to ensure the nature of its medical work.”

United Nations agencies and other international relief organizations in Gaza stopped supporting Shifa and all hospitals in the north of the strip early after Israel began its onslaught on Gaza in October, with Israel placing strict restrictions on the meager amount of aid coming in, including a total ban on fuel and on any supplies reaching the north.

United Nations Under Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths also said he was dismayed by reports of Israel storming the Shifa complex, demanding an end to the incursion and stressing that “hospitals are not battlefields.”

Many of Gaza’s hospital facilities are now out of service, with only one remaining in the north that can still accept patients. It is one of 14 operational hospitals still standing in the strip. Many hospitals have been exposed to damage in airstrikes, which killed over 400 people in the Ahli Arab Hospital alone.

The Gaza Government Media Office said that the Occupation army has conducted several hospital “massacres,” killing medical staff and ambulances, resulting in "more than 700 martyrs and injuries," in addition to “targeting 55 ambulances, and putting 25 hospitals out of service.”