Israeli army unveils footage it says shows hostages at Gaza hospital

Nevin Al Sukari - Sana'a - A screen grab of a video released by the Israeli army on November 19, 2023 shows security camera footage of what they claim to be Hamas bringing hostages to the Al Shifa hospital on October 7, 2023. — AFP pic/Israeli Army handout

JERUSALEM, Nov 20 — Israel’s military released security camera footage yesterday it said showed hostages being brought into Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on October 7 after being kidnapped during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel.

Al-Shifa hospital has become a focal point for Israel’s subsequent military operations in the Gaza Strip, with the army repeatedly saying Hamas uses it as a base, a claim the military has been under pressure to back up.

Hamas and medical staff have denied that a command centre is under the hospital.

The first clip, which appears to be time-stamped 10.53am on October 7, shows a man in shorts and a pale blue shirt being dragged through what looks like an entrance hall by five men, at least three of whom are armed.

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In the second, seemingly time-stamped 10.55am, an injured man in underwear is wheeled in on a gurney by seven men, at least four of them armed, as several men in blue hospital scrubs look on.

AFP was not immediately able to verify the footage.

“Here you can see Hamas taking a hostage inside... they’re taking him inside the hospital,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari said, describing the two men as hostages from Nepal and Thailand.

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“We have not yet located both of these hostages,” he added. “We do not know where they are.”

The CCTV footage appears to have been shot on the morning that Hamas gunmen began storming southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping some 240 others, according to Israeli authorities.

Since then, Israel has pounded Gaza relentlessly from the air, land and sea with officials in the Hamas-run territory saying 13,000 people have been killed, mostly civilians.

Soldier ‘murdered by Hamas’

“These findings prove that the Hamas terrorist organisation used the Shifa hospital complex on the day of the massacre as terrorist infrastructure,” the military and intelligence services said in a statement.

Hamas dismissed the footage. It had repeatedly said it had taken several captives to hospital for treatment, “particularly because some had been wounded in airstrikes” by Israel, senior political bureau member Izzat al-Rishq said in a statement.

“We have released images of all that and the army spokesman is acting as if he has discovered something incredible,” he added.

Earlier Sunday the Israeli army said, “troops exposed a 55-meter-long terror tunnel 10 metres deep underneath the Shifa hospital complex,” which ran under the hospital and ended at a blast door.

Hagari also gave more details about the death of 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano, who was taken hostage. The army announced on Friday that troops had recovered her remains in the area of Al-Shifa.

Hamas said she was killed by an Israeli air strike, a claim denied by Israel which said the militants murdered her.

Hagari said Marciano was being held by Hamas very close to Al-Shifa hospital.

“During ongoing combat in the vicinity of where she was held captive, Noa’s Hamas captor was killed and Noa was injured,” he said, stressing that her injuries “were not life-threatening”.

Citing “concrete intelligence”, he said “Hamas terrorists took Noa into Shifa hospital where she was murdered,” he said, with her body later dumped outside the hospital on an orange stretcher where troops found it. — AFP