GazaCNN —
The
Israeli military’s focus on
hospitals in Gaza is growing more intense as its campaign to eliminate Hamas from the enclave enters a sixth week.
The IDF invited news media to visit a medical center for children on Monday, where a spokesperson alleged parts of the basement had been a Hamas “command and control center” and may have been used to hold hostages.
A CNN team embedded with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and was shown guns and explosives in one room located beneath Al-Rantisi children’s hospital on Monday, which IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari termed an “armory.”
He also pointed to a chair with a rope next to it and a piece of women’s clothing, which he said would be tested for DNA, and a makeshift toilet.
Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas locates its operational bases in tunnels under hospitals and other civilian infrastructure. The access provided by the IDF provided Monday was an effort to back up those assertions, which are denied by Hamas, as well as health officials and hospitals in Gaza.
Concerns are mounting that hospitals are now being targeted for military action.
Searing images and accounts from civilians inside continue to emerge and as doctors warn they cannot evacuate their most vulnerable patients.
Speaking by phone to CNN on Tuesday, Mohammed Zarqout, who has responsibility for all of Gaza’s hospitals, said the basement at Al Rantisi had been used as a shelter for women and children – not to store Hamas weaponry and hold hostages – as well as being the location of the pharmacy and some of the hospital’s administrative offices before rainwater made it “impossible” to use.
Zarqout also told CNN that medical staff had been forced to leave the hospital by Israeli soldiers, and had been unable to take all the patients with them when they left.
