IDF arrests 80 Hamas terrorists with weapons from Gaza hospital

During military “activity” at a Gaza hospital, the Israeli army announced on Saturday that it had found weapons and detained about 80 Hamas members. Hamas called this a “horrific massacre”.

At the Kamal Adwan hospital in Gaza City, Israeli forces “fired at patient rooms” and detained staff members during a “siege” that lasted several days, according to a statement released on Wednesday by the Hamas-controlled health ministry.

On the same day, the hospital director and roughly seventy other medical staff members were reported to be “detained in an unknown location outside of the hospital” by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA.

It stated that although there had been reports of “ill-treatment” of those who had been detained, Israeli forces had freed five doctors and female employees.

On Saturday, the Israeli army said it had “completed its activity in the area of the Kamal Adwan hospital”, which it charged “had been used by Hamas as a command and control centre.”

“The troops apprehended approximately 80 terrorists… destroyed terror infrastructure in the area” and found “numerous weapons”, the army said.

Troops also “questioned the hospital workers”, it said.

“The workers confessed that weapons were hidden in incubators… that were supposed to be used to treat premature babies,” the army claimed.

In a statement Saturday, Hamas accused Israeli troops of having carried out a “horrific massacre” inside the hospital and said they had destroyed “with bulldozers the tents of the displaced people” sheltering there, causing a “number of deaths”.

The Hamas government has said that at least 18,800 people have been killed in the territory since the outbreak of the war, which was triggered by the group’s bloody attack on Israel on October 7.

That attack left around 1,140 people dead, according to official figures.

(with inputs from AFP)