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Pressure Mounts as Israel Combs Through Gaza Hospital for Hamas’s Presence [1]

['Patrick Kingsley', 'Thomas Fuller', 'More About Patrick Kingsley', 'More About Thomas Fuller']

Date: 2023-11-16  

Israel’s claims that Hamas, the armed Palestinian group that controls Gaza, operated from within the sprawling Al-Shifa complex have been central to its defense of its military campaign in Gaza. Israel says the soaring number of civilian deaths — more than 11,000 people, according to the Gazan authorities — has been caused in part by Hamas’s decision to hide its military fortifications and command centers inside civilian infrastructure like Al-Shifa.

The United States has backed Israel’s assertions that Al-Shifa Hospital was used by Hamas’s armed wing, with John Kirby, the U.S. National Security Council spokesman, telling reporters on Thursday that U.S. intelligence agencies had reached that conclusion independently.

“We have our own intelligence that convinces us that Hamas was using Al-Shifa as a command and control node — and, most likely, as well, as a storage facility,” CNN quoted Mr. Kirby as saying.

On Thursday the Israeli military said troops were using scanners at the hospital to search for “underground infrastructure” while under fire. The need for the scans highlighted the difficult reality of the military campaign.

Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, said on Tuesday that Israeli forces now controlled “the aboveground area” of northern Gaza. On Thursday, he said in a video statement that Israeli troops had “completed the capture and clearing of the entirety of the eastern part of Gaza City.” Yet, thousands of Hamas members could still be ensconced in tunnels under the Israeli positions.

The Israeli military’s release of a video on Thursday of what it said was a tunnel used by Hamas inside the Al-Shifa complex shows an area of excavated ground and an underground passage and door around two to three meters deep. The New York Times confirmed that the passageway was at the northern perimeter of the sprawling complex.

But it was unclear from the video what purpose the passageway served or how far it extended. Israeli forces appear to have destroyed a small structure and dug an extensive area of ground to uncover it, an analysis of satellite imagery and video showed. The structure appeared to be around the size of a domestic car garage with a canopy extending from it.

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[1] Url: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/world/middleeast/israel-gaza-al-shifa-hospital-hamas.html

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