Israeli Military Found Hamas Hideout Under Children's Hospital In Gaza

The terrorists were holding hostages in the basement.Israeli Military Found Hamas Hideout Under Children's Hospital In Gaza

The Israel Defense Forces continues its ground operation in the Gaza Strip. According to the Israeli military, the basement of a hospital in Gaza was used by the Hamas terrorist group to store weapons.

IDF Spokesman Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said during a nightly press conference on Monday, November 13, writes The Times of Israel.

“Hamas hides in hospitals. Today, we will expose this to the world,” he said.

Hagari presented evidence showing Hamas weapons being stored underneath Rantisi children’s hospital in Gaza, as well as rooms seemingly used to hold hostages. One room staged to look like a living room featured window curtains covering a tiled wall and a calendar of guard shifts starting on October 7, the day Hamas sent thousands of terrorists into Israel, where they slaughtered some 1,200 people and took another approximately 240 people hostage.

In an adjoining room was a chair with a woman’s robe and rope next to one of its legs, which Hagari said was evidence of constraints used. The chair sat under a piece of equipment donated by the World Health Organization, with a baby bottle on top and diapers on the floor.

“This is a war crime, this is a crime against humanity,” Hagari said, accusing international organizations funding the hospitals of aiding terror.

There was also a motorcycle thought used by a Palestinian to transport hostages into Gaza, Hagari charged, as well as what appeared to be makeshift bathrooms, a kitchen and ventilation pipes.

Israel is continuing to investigate if hostages were in fact held in the location, with forensic teams dispatched there Monday, Hagari said.

Among the weapons found in the hospital basement were suicide-bomb vests, grenades, AK-47 assault rifles, explosive devices, RPGs, and other weapons, according to the IDF. Hagari described the area as a Hamas command-and-control center.

“Hamas uses hospitals as an instrument of war,” said Hagari in a video from the hospital basement, standing in a room decorated with a colorful children’s drawing of a tree above the weapons displayed on the floor.

The press conference came as the Israel Defense Forces closed in on Gaza City’s Shifa Hospital, which Jerusalem says is hiding Hamas’s main operations center. The focus on Shifa and other hospitals has ratcheted up pressure on Israel to do more to protect Gazan civilians caught in the crossfire.

“Our war is against Hamas, not against the people in Gaza. Especially not the sick, the women, or the children,” Hagari said. “Our war is against Hamas who uses them as human shields.”

He said Israel had helped evacuate Rantisi, which specializes in cancer care, as well as other hospitals in northern Gaza, which has seen the heaviest fighting. Israel has urged civilians to leave northern Gaza for the southern part of the enclave.

Near the hospital, next to an apartment building where a senior Hamas commando had lived, soldiers also found a tunnel entrance covered by an explosives-proof door, though Hagari did not say if the tunnel reached the hospital.

Israel has long accused Hamas of using hospitals to hide military infrastructure, charging that the terror group uses the patients as human shields, forcing Israel to scale back its offensive or risk more civilian casualties.

“Hamas systematically runs its terror machine under hospitals in Gaza,” Hagari said.