IDF says it hit terrorists hiding in Gaza hospital, claims Hamas crumbling in Jabalia
Military publishes video of former UNRWA employee telling interrogator Hamas looted refugee aid agency; COGAT figures said to show drop in aid entering Strip for October
Israeli forces struck a Gaza hospital where it said “dozens of terrorists” had been found hiding out Thursday, as the military pushed an offensive in the north of the Strip, claiming regrouped terror cells in the city of Jabalia were falling apart.
There were no reports of any casualties at Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya after an IDF strike hit the third floor of the building, though Hamas-run health authorities in Gaza reported that at least 30 Palestinians were killed in other attacks throughout the Strip, without clarifying how many were combatants.
The Israel Defense Forces said it was continuing to strike targets in Jabalia and elsewhere, releasing what it said was testimony from a United Nations worker testifying that Hamas members had raided aid supplies and used UN vehicles to move around.
Northern Gaza, where Israel said in January it had dismantled the terror group’s command structure, is currently the main focus of the IDF’s operations in the Palestinian enclave. Earlier this month, it sent tanks into Jabalia, Beit Hanoun, and Beit Lahiya to flush out terror operatives it said had regrouped in the area.
Eid Sabbah, director of nursing at Kamal Adwan, told Reuters some staff had suffered minor burns from the strike on the hospital.
The IDF said in a statement following Thursday’s strike that “during the operation, it was found that dozens of terrorists were hiding in the hospital, with some even posing as hospital staff.”
Israeli forces who raided the hospital last week captured around 100 suspected Hamas operatives, the IDF said at the time.
Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said on Thursday that one of its doctors at the hospital, Mohammed Obeid, had been detained last Saturday by Israeli forces. It called for the protection of him and all medical staff who “are facing horrific violence as they try to provide care.”
Israel maintains that its military campaign takes pains to avoid casualties among civilians and aid workers, blaming the Hamas terror group for using innocent Gazans and international aid organizations as cover, putting them in the line of fire.
In a video published by the army’s public affairs arm Thursday, a Jabalia man described as a former security guard for UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, tells an Israeli interrogator that following the outbreak of the war on October 7, 2023, Hamas members came into an UNRWA facility and “took everything” by force.
The man said that Hamas members brazenly looted trucks loaded with “supplies,” and then commandeered the UNRWA vehicles as well, using them as a shield.
“It’s a form of defense for them, so they can move around easily, transport and get things et cetera,” the man said, according to a translation provided by the military.
When we say Hamas is embedded in @UNRWA this is what we mean.
WATCH a testimony of an UNRWA employee in northern Gaza, in which he explains how Hamas exploits UNRWA facilities and vehicles: pic.twitter.com/9K7u6hJlfn
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) October 31, 2024
The army said Thursday that its raids in Jabalia had netted arrests of hundreds of suspected terrorists, including some accused of taking part in the October 7 massacre.
It added that dozens of civilians evacuating south out of Jabalia had testified that they had been pressured and even threatened by Hamas to stay in the area, which the army claimed harbors a “high concentration of terrorists from Hamas and other terror organizations.”
“The surrender of terrorists and their attempts to move south as a result of military pressure testifies to the breaking of the terror stronghold of Jabalia,” the IDF said.
The army announced Thursday that a soldier with the Givati Brigade’s Rotem Battalion was seriously wounded during operations in northern Gaza. He was taken to a hospital in Israel for treatment.
In central Gaza, meanwhile, the military said on Thursday that troops destroyed a site used for the production of munitions.
Aid reported down
US State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said on Wednesday that since the US sent a letter to Israel on October 13 warning that continued security assistance was at risk if it didn’t take significant steps to improve the humanitarian crisis in Gaza within 30 days, the measures Jerusalem has taken have been minor and insufficient.
While there has been some improvement in the number of delivery routes to aid, the uptick has been minor and the humanitarian “situation still remains at a level that we don’t find acceptable,” Miller said.
He said there continue to be breakdowns in communications between the IDF and aid agencies and issues in which approvals aren’t granted by the IDF for aid workers to operate throughout Gaza, or issues where authorizations are given but they aren’t transmitted to officers on the ground. There are also still Palestinian armed gangs that have been looting some of the aid coming into Gaza, Miller said.
Citing figures from COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for facilitating the delivery of aid into Gaza, Haaretz revealed Thursday that the amount of aid in tons that entered the Strip during the month of October was the least this year.
On Tuesday, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield expressed her horror over reports from humanitarian agencies that no food assistance has reached the northern Gaza cities of Jabalia and Beit Lahiya in nearly a month.
“The United States has made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that one year into this conflict, Israel must address the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza; that the United States rejects any Israeli efforts to starve Palestinians in Jabalia, or anywhere else,” she said in her remarks to UN Security Council session on the war in Gaza.
The war in Gaza erupted after Hamas’s October 7 massacre, which saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, many amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, the IDF launched a wide-scale campaign in the Strip, which the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says has left more than 42,000 people dead or presumed dead.
This toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it had killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Jacob Magid contributed to this report.