“We arrested more than 200 suspected terrorists during the operation, and they are currently being investigated,” Israel’s military spokesman, Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari, said in a televised statement.
“We eliminated more than 20 terrorists within the hospital complex” and another 20 “in the area surrounding the hospital,” Hagari stated.
Fayq al-Mabhouh, the “head of special operations at the Hamas internal security organisation,” was among those killed, according to Hagari. A Gaza police source confirmed his death, stating that Mabhouh was a brigadier general in the force.
Speaking late Monday, Hagari stated that Israeli soldiers were “continuing operations inside the hospital complex tonight”.
The World Health Organization expressed concern about the latest military operation around the hospital, which had previously been raided by Israeli troops in November, sparking an international outcry.
“We are deeply concerned 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 The Ultimate News witnessed airstrikes on buildings near the hospital and reported seeing “hundreds of people, mostly children, women, and the elderly, fleeing their homes”.
Israel has repeatedly claimed that the complex housed an underground Hamas control base, which the militants deny.
– Hospitals Out of Action –
Hagari stated that it housed Hamas militants, including commanders who had “converted it into a command center from which they dispatched and managed terror operations and combat.”
Tedros stated that Al-Shifa had “only recently restored minimal health services”.
According to Ultimate News, the majority of Gaza’s hospitals have closed.
Fayq al-Mabhouh is the brother of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, one of the founders of Hamas’ armed wing, according to family members.
Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in Dubai in 2010, in an attack that United Arab Emirates investigators suspected was carried out by Mossad, Israel’s spy agency.
On Monday, the army released a video showing what it claimed were weapons and money seized from Al-Shifa and used by Hamas and another armed group, Islamic Jihad.
In January, Israel’s army announced that it had “completed the dismantling” of Hamas’ command structure in the northern Gaza Strip, where Al-Shifa is located.
The military has conducted operations at other Gaza hospitals since the war began on October 7, when Hamas militants attacked Israel from Gaza.
According to an The Ultimate News tally based on official Israeli figures, the unprecedented attack killed approximately 1,160 people in Israel, the majority of whom were civilians.
Gaza militants also took approximately 250 hostages, of whom Israel believes 130 are still in Gaza, including 33 who are presumed dead.
Israel has launched a relentless bombing campaign and ground offensive, killing at least 31,726 people, the majority of whom are women and children, according to Gaza’s health ministry.