The Israeli army on Wednesday took journalists to what remains of the immense compound of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, destroyed by bombing, and where what is presented as a network of Hamas tunnels was exposed.
The establishment was the focal point of several weeks of fighting, with the army convinced that the Palestinian Islamist movement housed weapons stocks and a command center there, something Hamas has always denied.
AFP was one of around twenty journalists invited to visit the site at daybreak. The published photos, videos and interviews were all subject to military censorship.
Visible electrical wires, ruined urban landscape, silted streets, shattered windows. A few meters underground, a narrow tunnel.
“It’s very long,” assures Colonel Elad Tsury, commander of the 7th brigade. “This tunnel goes from the city to the hospital,” he assures, leading journalists to a kitchenette with a sink, a toilet and a room housing two metal beds and air conditioning.
When they want to protect themselves, Hamas fighters “go down, use hospitals as human shields and can stay there for a long time,” he added. But journalists were unable to visit the rest of the establishment. Failing that, they were able to observe a stock of weapons, ammunition and explosives displayed by the army and belonging, according to it, to Hamas.
The visit came as Israel and Hamas announced a deal to release 50 hostages held in the Gaza Strip in exchange for 150 Palestinians held in Israeli prisons during a four-day truce in the Palestinian territory. .
The army on Sunday released images presented as coming from surveillance cameras at al-Shifa hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, showing hostages brought to the establishment on October 7, the day of the attack on Hamas in southern Israel.