Israel’s military said 20 Palestinian terrorists were killed Monday and dozens detained during a raid on Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital.
Soldiers rolled in with tanks and air strikes hit the area around the Hamas-ruled territory’s biggest medical centre, a complex crowded with patients and displaced people.
“Twenty terrorists have been eliminated at Al-Shifa hospital thus far in various engagements, and dozens of apprehended suspects are currently in questioning,” the army said in a statement.
Israel earlier reported the “elimination” of Fayq al-Mabhouh, a man they identified as a Hamas internal security official. A Gaza police source confirmed his death, saying Mabhouh was a brigadier general in the force.
The latest military operation around the hospital — which was raided by Israeli troops before, in November, sparking an international outcry — triggered alarm from the World Health Organization.
“We are terribly worried about the situation at Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza,” WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Hospitals should never be battlegrounds.”
An AFP journalist witnessed air strikes on buildings in the area around the hospital and reported seeing “hundreds of people, mostly children, women, and the elderly, fleeing their homes”.
