What Israel finds — or doesn’t — in the hospital may have an effect on worldwide sentiment about the invasion and affect the negotiations going down on liberating greater than 200 hostages being held by Hamas.
Eighteen hours after the raid on the hospital started, the Israeli army launched pictures and video that it mentioned backed its assertions. It distributed photographs of 13 weapons that it mentioned its troopers had found in the hospital, in addition to an announcement saying that it had discovered a army command middle in the hospital’s M.R.I. unit.
In a video taken at the hospital, a army spokesman, Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, displayed caches of weapons, ammunition, protecting vests and Hamas army uniforms, some of which, he mentioned, had been hidden behind M.R.I. machines and others in close by storage items.
The New York Times was unable to confirm the provenance of the weapons and tools in the photographs or assess the declare of the command middle’s existence. Apart from a gunfight outdoors the hospital at the begin of the raid, there have been no experiences of clashes with Hamas gunmen at the web site.
In an announcement, Hamas dismissed the Israeli account as “a fabricated story that no one would believe.”
Should the Israelis in the finish be unable to give you compelling proof that the hospital was used to accommodate troops, retailer weapons and command fighters, they could discover that the time left to attain their said objective — eradicating Hamas from energy — has been curtailed. Israel’s focusing on of Al-Shifa has already drawn world concern; a failure to show the raid’s necessity may make Israel’s worldwide companions much less supportive of additional Israeli operations in Gaza.
A spokesman for the U.S. National Security Council, John F. Kirby, rejecting Hamas claims that the United States had given the raid on Al-Shifa a “green light,” mentioned Wednesday that Israel had not alerted the White House forward of time.
The struggle started on Oct. 7, after Hamas led a terrorist assault on Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 folks and kidnapping roughly 240 others, based on Israeli officers. In the 40 days since, Israel’s counterattack — by air, sea and land — has killed greater than 11,000 folks in Gaza, together with greater than 4,600 youngsters, based on well being officers in Gaza.
Israel is pushing to oust Hamas from energy and re-establish management over a territory that it occupied between 1967 and 2005. Since 2007, when Hamas took full management of the slender coastal enclave, Israel, in unison with Egypt, has maintained a good blockade on Gaza.
Initially, at the very least, the raid on Wednesday appeared to move with out main bloodshed.
Israeli troopers briefly exchanged fireplace with gunmen outdoors the hospital earlier than coming into, a senior army official mentioned.
The hospital director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, mentioned in a broadcast interview with Al Jazeera that the troopers had destroyed a wall of the hospital compound earlier than coming into, shattering a number of home windows and wounding folks inside with shrapnel.
“We can see the tanks before our eyes and we can see the soldiers walking inside the hospital,” he mentioned.