Hamas fighters use ‘safe’ hospitals as terror bases knowing they ‘won’t be targeted’, admits director of Gaza medical facility during Israeli interrogation
- Ahmed Kahlot, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, made the admission
- He said the terror group used his hospital to hide its operatives inside
Hamas fighters used a ‘safe’ hospital as a terror base knowing they ‘won’t be targeted’, the director of a Gaza medical facility has admitted to Israeli security forces.
Ahmed Kahlot, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya in the north of the Gaza Strip, made the confession under interrogation, Israeli media reports.
He told Shin Bet officials that Hamas used the hospital to hide its operatives, carry out military activities, move its personnel around and even bring in captured soldiers, according to Israel National News.
‘They hide in hospitals because for them a hospital is a safe place. They won’t be targeted when they are inside a hospital,’ Kahalot said, the outlet reported.
Kahlot said he was recruited by Hamas in 2010. ‘I know 16 employees in the hospital – doctor, nurse, paramedic, or clerks… who also have different positions in al-Qassam.’
Ahmed Kahlot (pictured), the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabalya in the north of the Gaza Strip, made the confession under interrogation, Israeli media reports
The director told Shin Bet officials that Hamas used the hospital (pictured on December 16) to hide its operatives, carry out military activities, move its personnel around and even bring in captured soldiers, according to Israel National News
The al-Qassam brigades is the military wing of the terror group that attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 Israelis and taking 240 hostage into Gaza.
‘There are offices where the Hamas leader and two of the senior officials were. There’s a place where the soldier was in (the kidnapped soldier),’ he continued.
‘There’s a place for the interrogators, internal security, and special security. All of them have private telephone lines inside the hospital.’
He added: ‘They [Hamas] have a private ambulance, even its colour and the way it’s painted are different, and it doesn’t have a license plate.
‘They used it to transport the soldier [kidnapped] and transport bodies… It didn’t assist us with transporting the injured,’ Israel National News quoted him as saying.
‘I begged him to take someone to the Indonesian Hospital, take to Shifa [hospital], but he would refuse. His mission is more important.
Despite suggesting he was a member of the group, Kahalot criticised Hamas’ use of his and other hospitals. ‘The leaders of Hamas are cowards. They left us in the field while they hid in secret places… They have destroyed us.’
Kahlot’s confession came after footage released by the IDF purportedly showed Hamas fighters surrendering from inside the Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Video showed men, said to be Hamas terrorists, leaving the hospital with their hands above their heads. Others surrendered weapons, placing them on the ground.
More than 70 surrendering ‘ Hamas operatives’ emerged from the Gaza hospital in a video last week – some with weapons raised above their heads, video released today appears to show
Footage released by the IDF, purportedly from outside the hospital (pictured), showed dozens of men, many of them young, exiting a building single file with their hands in the air
Israel has long accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, in effect using them as civilian shields against IDF attacks.
READ MORE: Israeli artillery cannon is deliberately fired as female soldier stands in front of the barrel, sending her to the ground and sparking IDF investigation
Hospitals, protected under international humanitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war on October 7.
The military accuses Hamas of having tunnels under hospitals and using the medical facilities as command centres to plan and carry out attacks against the army and Israel, a charge denied by the Islamist group.
On Sunday world Health Organisaion chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the agency was ‘appalled by the effective destruction’ of another northern Gaza hospital, Kamal Adwan, where Israeli forces carried out a multi-day operation against Hamas.
And on Tuesday, one of the last remaining hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip stopped operating after being stormed by the Israeli army, its director said.
Fadel Naim told AFP Israeli troops had attacked the Al-Ahli hospital and arrested doctors, medical staff and patients, destroying part of the building’s grounds.
Israel’s attack has ‘put the hospital out of action’, he said. ‘We can’t receive any patients or injured.’
At least four people who were wounded by Israeli fire on Monday died on Tuesday after being injured in the Al-Ahli assault, he said. ‘According to our information, there are dozens of wounded in the surrounding streets,’ he said.
Al-Ahli, also known as the Baptist or Ahli Arab hospital, was already heavily damaged by an explosion in its car park on October 17, resulting in at least dozens of deaths.
Militant groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad accused Israel, which denied responsibility and blamed a misfired rocket by Islamic Jihad for that blast.
Israeli troops have previously raided other medical facilities in Gaza, including Al-Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital, which is now functioning at minimal capacity with a very small team.
Last month Al-Shifa hospital became the focus of an extended army operation as part of its war against Hamas.
On Sunday, the World Health Organisation said Al-Ahli hospital was receiving ‘critical patients’ from Al-Shifa for surgery.
The Al-Shifa emergency department, devastated by Israeli bombardments, is ‘a blood bath’ and ‘in need of resuscitation’, the WHO said.
Ashraf al-Qudra, spokesman for the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory, said on Tuesday that another hospital in northern Gaza, Al-Awda in the Jabalia area, had been turned ‘into a barracks’ by the Israeli army.
He said the army was holding 240 people in the hospital, ‘including 80 medical staff and 40 patients,’ and had arrested its director, doctor Ahmad Mhanna.
Israel is facing mounting international pressure over the rising civilian death toll and destruction of hospitals in Gaza.
Smoke rises over northern Gaza, as viewed from the Israeli side of the border on December 19
The deadliest-ever war in the narrow territory began after Hamas militants poured across the border in an attack on October 7 that killed around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on the latest official Israeli figures.
During their attack, militants abducted about 250 people, latest Israeli figures say.
In Israel’s retaliatory bombardment and ground offensive against Hamas, at least 19,667 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in the Palestinian territory, according to the health ministry there.
The ministry says around 52,600 have also been wounded.
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