JERUSALEM - Israeli forces raided the biggest functioning hospital in Gaza, they said on Feb 15, as videos posted online showed chaos, shouting and the sound of shooting in darkened corridors that were filled with dust and smoke.

The raid on the hospital comes as international concern grows over the fate of some one million Palestinians taking shelter in the southern city of Rafah, after Israel earlier in February announced plans to expand its operations there.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari described the raid on Nasser Hospital as “precise and limited”. He said the operation was based on credible information that militant group Hamas was hiding in the facility and had kept hostages there, and that bodies of hostages may still be there.

A spokesperson for Hamas denied that, calling it “lies”.

The health authorities in the Hamas-run enclave said Israel had forced out displaced people and families of medical staff sheltering in Nasser Hospital.

The current war in Gaza began on Oct 7 when Hamas gunmen killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took some 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Israel’s retaliatory air and ground offensive has since devastated tiny, crowded Gaza, killing more than 28,500 people, according to the enclave’s Health Ministry. It has also forced nearly all of Gaza’s inhabitants from their homes.

The United Nations humanitarian office said on Feb 14 that Nasser Hospital was besieged by Israeli forces, with allegations of sniper fire at the facility, endangering the lives of medics, patients and thousands of displaced people.

Medical charity Medicins San Frontieres – also known as Doctors Without Borders – said people ordered by Israel to evacuate the hospital faced an impossible choice: to stay “and become a potential target” or leave for “an apocalyptic landscape” of bombings.

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

Attacks on medical facilities in Gaza have caused particular concern throughout the conflict, including Israeli raids on hospitals in other cities, shelling in the vicinity of hospitals and the targeting of ambulances.

As massive bombardment destroyed swathes of residential districts and forced most people from their homes, hospitals quickly became the focus of displaced camps as people sought shelter around buildings they thought more likely to be safe.

Israel accuses Hamas of regularly using hospitals, ambulances and other medical facilities for military purposes and has shown footage its troops have taken of tunnels containing weapons below some hospitals.

The Israeli military later said it had apprehended a number of suspects at the hospital and that its operations there were continuing.

Senior Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri said Israel’s statement accusing the group of hiding fighters or keeping hostages at the hospital was “lies”. He added that “all previous Israeli allegations against hospitals had proven to be false”.

Videos show hospital chaos

On the hospital raid, Israeli Rear-Admiral Hagari said: “This sensitive operation was prepared with precision and is being conducted by IDF special forces who underwent specified training,” referring to the Israeli Defence Forces.

He said one objective of the operation was to ensure the hospital could continue treating Gazan patients and “we communicated this in a number of conversations we had with the hospital staff”, adding there was no obligation to evacuate.

Gaza Health Ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said Israel had forced doctors at Nasser Hospital to abandon patients in intensive care there, putting their lives in danger.

Videos that Reuters verified on Feb 15 as having been filmed inside Nasser Hospital, though it could not verify when, show scenes of chaos and terror.

Men walk through dark corridors using the lights from their phones, with plaster dust swirling around and debris lying in the corridors, even wheeling a bed through a damaged area.

At one point in a video, gunshots ring out and a doctor shouts: “Is there anyone still inside? There is gunfire, there is gunfire, heads down.”

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

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

No place in Gaza is safe

The tensions at the hospital played out as Israel carried out extensive air strikes in southern Lebanon on Feb 14 in response to a deadly rocket attack on northern Israel.

The rocket attack struck a military base near the city of Safed, killing a soldier and wounding eight people, the Israeli authorities said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion quickly fell on Hezbollah, the Lebanese militia allied with Hamas.

Israeli forces have been expanding their offensive in Khan Younis for weeks, saying they are targeting Hamas militants in the city. Israeli leaders have also vowed to invade Rafah, farther south, calling it Hamas’ last stronghold.

Rafah is the last major Gaza city that troops have yet to enter, even as it is bombarded by air strikes almost daily. More than one million people are crammed into the area, which is next to the border with Egypt, and sheltering in makeshift tents.

The Israeli military on Feb 14 accused Hamas of conducting military activity on the grounds of Nasser Hospital and said the area “was used to hold hostages”.

“We demand the immediate cessation of all military activity in the area of the hospital and the immediate departure of military operatives from it,” the military said in a statement.

The military instructed civilians to evacuate, though it said it had not called on patients and medical staff to leave. It called for civilians sheltering at the hospital to go to “safer spaces” in southern and central Gaza and said Israel had “opened a secure route to evacuate the civilian population”.

A video shared on social media on Feb 14 and verified by The New York Times shows crowds of people, many carrying their belongings and bedding, leaving the hospital as explosions sounded in the background.

But many Palestinians and aid groups said no place in Gaza is safe, and doctors at the hospital and the Gaza Health Ministry said some people who tried to flee the hospital compound on Feb 13 were shot at by Israeli soldiers, who killed some and wounded others.

The Israeli military did not respond to questions about those reports.

As Israeli troops approached the hospital, negotiators met in Cairo for a second day of discussions aimed at reaching an agreement that could pause the fighting and free the remaining hostages. But Israel and Hamas do not appear to be close to a deal.

An Egyptian official, briefed on the talks after a first day of high-level negotiations on Feb 13 ended without an agreement, described the tenor of the negotiations as positive.

The following day, however, the Israeli news media reported that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had pulled the Israeli delegation from the talks – something that his office, in a statement, did not directly address. But the statement said: “Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed that Israel will not submit to Hamas’ delusional demands.”

The news reports infuriated a group representing relatives of the Israeli hostages. Called the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, the group has been pressing him to do more to secure the release of the captives.

To pull out of the talks, the group said, would be to “consciously sacrifice the lives of the abductees”. It added that it plans to protest outside the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem.

Mr Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority which partly administers the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on Feb 14 urged Hamas and Israel to reach an agreement, saying it could prevent a devastating Israeli incursion into Rafah.

“We call on everyone, especially the Hamas movement, to quickly complete the deal so that we can protect our people and remove all obstacles,” he said in a statement reported by Wafa, the authority’s official news agency. Mr Abbas leads Fatah, a political party that is a rival of Hamas.

With food, water and medicine in desperately short supply in Gaza, the Biden administration on Feb 14 called on Israel to stop blocking flour shipments to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA).

Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said on Feb 13 that he issued a directive not to transfer flour to UNRWA, the main UN aid agency for Palestinians in Gaza. He cited allegations that some of its employees were tied to Hamas, including 12 accused of having roles in the Oct 7 attack and its aftermath.

About 1,050 containers, most filled with flour, were held up at the Israeli port of Ashdod, Mr Philippe Lazzarini, the head of UNRWA, told reporters on Feb 9. That would be enough to feed 1.1 million Palestinians for a month, he added.

At a news conference on Feb 14, US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said: “That flour has not moved the way that we had expected it would move. We expect that Israel will follow through on its commitment to get that flour into Gaza.”

Nasser Hospital was treating about 400 patients on Feb 14, including about 80 in intensive care, with 35 on dialysis, said Mr Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organisation (WHO) representative for the West Bank and Gaza.

The WHO last had access to the hospital, the largest in southern Gaza, on Jan 29, he added. He said it sought Israel’s permission to carry out two missions in the last five days to resupply the hospital with medicine and assess its condition, but Israel denied the requests.

“Without this support and without being able to access this hospital, it might well become non-functional,” he said via video from Rafah.

The Israeli military has previously rejected accusations that it has blocked medical supply missions. On Feb 12, after the WHO said it had been denied access to the hospital, the Israeli agency that coordinates policy for the Palestinian territories said the WHO “never submitted a coordination request”.

On Feb 14, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, said: “Nasser is the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza. It must be protected. Humanitarian access must be allowed.” REUTERS, NYTIMES