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Five intensive care patients have died after an Israeli raid on the largest hospital in southern Gaza cut power and oxygen supplies to the wards, local health officials said on Friday.
Israel said Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis was being used by Hamas, and Gaza health ministry officials said Israeli troops had taken complete control of the hospital, entering the maternity ward and administrative buildings.
The ministry said in a series of statements that the patients died as a result of the loss of power and oxygen, and further patients, including children, were at risk.
Israel launched its raid on the hospital on Thursday after ordering the evacuation of civilians sheltering in the last big medical facility still operating in the Gaza strip.
The Israel Defense Forces said they had “credible intelligence that Hamas held hostages” in the hospital and “appear to be operating from within the hospital, too.”
“We are operating in Nasser hospital now,” Israeli defence minister Yoav Gallant told reporters at his office in Tel Aviv. “More than 7,000 people left the arena around the hospital and approximately 70 terrorists were arrested. This includes more than 20 who participated in the October 7th massacre.”
Khaled al-Serr, a doctor at the hospital, said in a video that all staff and around 100-120 patients had been moved by Israeli forces to one department.
“The Israeli army invaded the hospital by soldiers and by tanks and bulldozers. They were digging in the yard surrounding the building and now they have displaced all the hospital workers and all the patients from all the buildings to be contained in one department,” he said in a video posted on Instagram.
On Wednesday morning, al-Serr shared footage of an ICU patient who he said had just died “because they cut all the electricity”. The video could not be independently verified by the Financial Times.
Hamas seized 250 hostages during its October 7 attack on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people, according to Israeli officials, and triggered the war. About 130 remain in the strip, although some of those are believed to have died.
“During searches in the area of the hospital, IDF troops located mortar shells, grenades and additional weapons” belonging to Hamas, the IDF said in a statement on Friday, adding that Hamas had “previously used the hospital as a launch pad to fire mortar shells”.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed more than 28,700 people have been since October 7, according to Palestinian officials.
The UN’s humanitarian office, OCHA, citing Gaza officials, said about 2,500 people, including displaced people, patients and medical workers, were still in the Nasser complex when the raid on the besieged hospital began.
The NGO Médecins Sans Frontières said its staff working in the hospital on Thursday reported shelling and “a chaotic situation, with an undetermined number of people killed and injured”. It said its staff “have had to flee the hospital, leaving patients behind”.
The head of the World Health Organization said this week that two planned missions to reach the hospital, “the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza”, had been denied access and added that WHO staff had lost contact with hospital personnel. On Friday, the WHO said it was still trying to reach the complex.
“There are still critically injured and sick patients that are inside the hospital,” a WHO spokesperson said. “There is an urgent need to deliver fuel to ensure the continuation of the provision of life-saving services.”
IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Israel had “no intention of disrupting the hospital’s function. Rather, we provide aid and needed equipment. The only ones with an interest in turning hospitals into battlegrounds are Hamas terrorists.”
As world leaders met in Munich for an annual conference on global security on Friday, western governments’ fears were growing that Israel’s war against Hamas would escalate into a wider conflagration in the Middle East.
Exchanges of air strikes, drone strikes and anti-tank fire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant movement Hizbollah in Lebanon have continued to intensify. The IDF reported its fighter jets struck four targets in southern Lebanon linked to the group, which is supporting Hamas, on Thursday and overnight.
In central Israel, a lone gunman opened fire at a bus stop on Friday, killing two people and injuring four. The shooter was killed by an armed civilian nearby. The Haaretz newspaper named the shooter as a Palestinian resident of the Shoafat refugee camp in East Jerusalem.
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