Chaos as Israeli forces storm hospital

JERUSALEM: Israeli forces raided the biggest functioning hospital in Gaza as footage showed chaos, shouting and gunfire in dark corridors filled with dust and smoke.

Israel’s military called the raid on Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis ‘‘precise and limited’’ and said it was based on information that Hamas militants were hiding and had kept hostages in the facility and that some bodies of captives were possibly there.

It said it carried out an airstrike that killed a Hamas commander who had participated in the October 7 attack.

He had also held captive a female Israeli soldier who was executed by Hamas, the military said.

Hamas called that lies.

Health authorities in the Hamasrun Palestinian enclave said Israel had forced out displaced people and families of medical staff sheltering in Nasser Hospital. Some 2000 Palestinians arrived in the southern border city of Rafah overnight while others pushed north to Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, they said.

This chapter of the Israel-Palestinian war began on October 7 when Hamas sent fighters into Israel, killing 1200 people, mostly civilians, and seizing 253 hostages according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s air and ground offensive has since devastated the Gaza Strip, killing 28,663 people, also mostly civilian, according to health authorities, and forcing nearly all its more than 2 million inhabitants from their homes.

Separately, medical officials said an Israeli strike killed three Palestinians in a car in Gaza City.

The Israeli military said a soldier was killed in fighting in southern Gaza, bring its total losses since ground incursions began on October 20 to 235.

The medical charity Medicins San Frontieres said Israel shelled the hospital in the early hours, despite having told medical staff and patients they could remain.

‘‘Our medical staff have had to flee the hospital, leaving patients behind,’’ it said on social media platform X.

Fighting at the hospital comes as Israel faces growing international pressure to show restraint, after vowing to press its offensive into Rafah, the last relatively safe place in Gaza.

Israel accuses Hamas of regularly using hospitals, ambulances and other medical facilities for military purposes, and has aired footage taken by its troops that it says shows tunnels containing weapons below some hospitals.

The military said it apprehended various suspects at the Nasser Hospital and that its operations there were continuing.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Israel was lying about Nasser

Israeli military spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said ‘‘this sensitive operation was prepared with precision and is being conducted by IDF special forces who underwent specified training’’.

The Gaza Health Ministry said Israel had forced doctors at Nasser hospital to abandon patients in intensive care.

Videos as having been filmed inside Nasser Hospital showed chaos and terror.

Men walked through corridors using phone lights, with plaster dust swirling around and debris lying about.

In one video, gunshots rang out and a doctor shouted: ‘‘Is there anyone still inside? There is gunfire, there is gunfire – heads down’’.

Another man in a video said the Israeli army had surrounded the hospital and nobody could get out.

Mohammad al Moghrabi, who had been sheltering in the compound, said some people who attempted to leave on Wednesday were shot at and so returned to the hospital.

The World Health Organisation has previously said half the Nasser medical staff had already fled.

Israel said its forces had killed ‘‘a number of terrorists’’ in central Gaza and Khan Younis in the previous 24 hours, including some 15 Hamas fighters in Gaza City.

Reuters