IDF rejects ‘baseless’ claim of Gaza hospital mass burials, says bodies were exhumed in hunt for hostages
Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian is The Times of Israel's military correspondent
The IDF rejects claims by Hamas officials saying that Israeli troops were involved in mass graves and alleged executions of Palestinians at a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
“The claim that the IDF buried Palestinian bodies is completely baseless,” the IDF says in response to a query on the matter.
Hamas officials in Gaza claimed to have “discovered” a mass grave with more than 200 bodies at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, falsely asserting that those Palestinians were killed and then buried by Israeli forces.
The UN rights office claimed that some of the bodies were “found with their hands tied and stripped of their clothes.”
The IDF in its response says that during its operation in the area of Nasser Hospital in recent months, troops examined corpses that had been buried by Palestinians on the medical center’s grounds, “as part of an effort to locate hostages.”
The military says it operated in a “targeted manner,” only where it had intelligence that Israeli hostages may have been buried.
“The examinations were carried out in an orderly manner while maintaining the dignity of the deceased and in a respectful manner,” the IDF says, adding that the bodies were “returned to their place in an orderly and proper manner.”
In late February, the IDF carried out a raid against Hamas in the area of Nasser Hospital, with the IDF saying that it captured some 200 terror operatives who were holed up at the medical center.
Also amid the operation, Israeli forces found unused medication that had been destined for Israeli hostages, as well as caches of weapons.
“The operation was carried out in a targeted manner and without harming the hospital, the patients and the medical staff,” the IDF adds.
No bodies of hostages were found in the area.
Footage has documented Palestinians burying their dead at the hospital grounds before Israeli troops operated in the area.
The area of the burial site was geo-located by experts to the same location where Hamas officials claimed to have discovered a new mass grave.
GeoConfirmed ISR-PAL Investigation.
Palestinians are exhuming bodies from the grounds of the Nasser Medical Complex hospital complex in Khan Younis, Gaza.
This is occurring at the same location where mass graves were dug and burial ceremonies had taken place by Palestinians in… pic.twitter.com/4UgFcTEpPn— GeoConfirmed (@GeoConfirmed) April 22, 2024
Generally, the IDF does not tend to the bodies of slain Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
There is no evidence indicating that the burial ground the army says it examined in February is a different site from where Hamas claimed to have found a new mass grave.
