Deadly Strike Hits Northern Gaza Hospital Where Many Were Sheltering
At least 12 people were killed and dozens wounded in an attack on a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday morning as fighting escalated around it, according to two hospital staff members and the Gazan health ministry, which blamed Israel for the strike.
Recent video shot in the area and geolocated by The New York Times showed several Israeli tanks within a few hundred yards of the hospital and moving toward it. The two staff members said on Monday that the second floor of the hospital, where dozens of patients and displaced people were sleeping, was hit by artillery fire, and that medical workers were unable to move the dead bodies as fighting continued outside.
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Video shot by Palestinian journalists and verified by The New York Times showed a scene of devastation within a ward of the hospital on Monday, with bodies and wreckage sprawled across the floor, and debris hanging from the ceiling. A video made on Sunday showed the same interior intact.
The Israeli military said that its forces had come under fire overnight “from within the Indonesian Hospital,” and that it “directly targeted the specific source of enemy fire” in response. “No shells were fired toward the hospital,” the military said in a statement.
Since invading Gaza more than three weeks ago, the Israeli military has steadily surrounded several hospitals in northern Gaza. Israel says that Hamas, the armed group that rules Gaza and launched the devastating Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, has concealed bases inside hospitals, and it has begun releasing videos taken by its forces searching Al-Shifa that it says support its assertion.
Proof of an extensive Hamas command center under Al-Shifa has yet to be revealed.
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A video posted early Monday by a man who had been sharing videos from the hospital for days showed him running out of the hospital compound with others as gunshots rang out. The Times verified that the video was taken at the hospital.