The United Nations\u2019 human rights chief has called on Israel to give his team access to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after Israel\u2019s military released video of what it called a Hamas \u201coperational tunnel shaft\u201d in the complex\u2019s grounds, a claim immediately rejected by the militant group and medical administrators as \u201cridiculous.\u201d <\/p>\n
The video, released on Thursday, shows a hole in the ground and what appears to be a shaft reinforced with concrete with exposed pipes and cabling. <\/p>\n
The video does not show the inside of the shaft. <\/p>\n
In a televised briefing later Thursday, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said army engineers were still working to expose the tunnel infrastructure. <\/p>\n
The UN\u2019s High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker T\u00fcrk called on Israel to grant independent investigators access to Gaza to probe the competing claims. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is precisely where you need an independent international investigation, because we have different narratives,\u201d said T\u00fcrk on Thursday. \u201cYou cannot use \u2026 hospitals, for any military purposes.\u00a0But you also cannot attack a hospital in the absence of clear evidence.\u201d <\/p>\n
The release of the video came as Israeli troops continued to conduct what an Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesman called \u201cvery specific, contained operations\u201d both \u201cinside and in the vicinity of the hospital complex.\u201d <\/p>\n
Israel has been bombarding Gaza, an impoverished and densely packed territory, since the deadly October 7 attack on its territory by Hamas militants. <\/p>\n
Israeli airstrikes have killed 11,470 people in Gaza, 4,707 of them children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah said Thursday, citing medical sources in the Hamas-controlled enclave. <\/p>\n
The actions of both Israel and Hamas since the militant group\u2019s massacre of an estimated 1,200 people on October 7 must be investigated,\u00a0T\u00fcrk\u00a0said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhat Hamas did \u2013 the horrific killing of civilians, the fact that they took hostages \u2013 are clear violations of the law. The fact that we have seen a collective punishment by Israel of Gaza, by cutting off supplies, of medical necessities, of food, of electricity, of water, is also [a] very serious matter under international humanitarian law,\u201d said T\u00fcrk. <\/p>\n
\u201cSo, indeed, there are issues that we all have to look into because they are very serious. And they require answers.\u00a0And they require accountability,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n
T\u00fcrk\u00a0said hospitals had special protection at all time under humanitarian law. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it comes to hospitals to medical facilities, to medical personnel, there needs to be special protection for them because, of course, hospitals provide life-saving services. There needs to be effective communication when it comes to evacuations, for example, and there needs to be special provision made for the wounded and the injured to be cared for,\u201d said T\u00fcrk. <\/p>\n
Israel and the United States have accused Hamas of operating what they claim is a command center under the\u00a0hospital in Gaza and Israeli is under pressure to uncover evidence of the\u00a0sort of multi-layered network of\u00a0tunnels and chambers that officials have said lies beneath the hospital. <\/p>\n
The Hamas-run government media office released a statement calling Israel\u2019s claim about the tunnel shaft a \u201cridiculous scenario.\u201d It accused Israel of pushing \u201cfalse scenarios, fabricated narratives, and distorted information\u201d about the hospital. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt is a failed attempt to escape future accountability and legal pursuit,\u201d the Hamas statement said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe Palestinian Ministry of Health has repeatedly requested dozens of times (for) all institutions, organizations, international bodies, and relevant parties to form technical teams to visit and inspect all hospitals, in order to refute the false incitement narrative,\u201d it added. <\/p>\n
The release of the latest video came as Israel\u00a0also said\u00a0that it had found the body of Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old grandmother who was kidnapped from a kibbutz near the Gaza Strip during the attack by Hamas militants on October 7. <\/p>\n
Friday morning the IDF announced it had recovered the body of a second Israeli hostage, 19-year old Noa Marciano, a corporal in the Israel Defense Forces. <\/p>\n
IDF statements said both bodies were found in what were described as \u201cstructures\u201d near the Shifa hospital, though it is not known if the bodies were found together, and the precise circumstances surrounding the deaths of both women has not been made clear. <\/p>\n
Israeli forces launched a raid on\u00a0Al-Shifa early Wednesday\u00a0and soon after released images showing firearms, body armor, and a laptop that it said contained incriminating material recovered from the hospital. <\/p>\n
On Thursday, the IDF also claimed to have found a booby-trapped car in the hospital complex containing a large amount of weapons and ammunition. <\/p>\n
Thousands of medical personnel, patients, and displaced people remained inside Al-Shifa Thursday amid conditions that doctors have called \u201ccatastrophic,\u201d with food, water, and medical supplies exhausted. <\/p>\n
The hospital, the largest in Gaza, has run out of fuel and is no longer considered operational. Earlier this week, doctors and journalists described desperate efforts to keep premature babies alive and limited procedures taking place by candlelight. <\/p>\n
Hospital director Mohammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera Thursday that children were starving, and his medical staff had been forced to make \u201charrowing\u201d decisions such as amputating patients\u2019 limbs to prevent the spread of infection from untreated wounds. <\/p>\n
Abu Salmiya reported the death of a kidney patient, with four others on the brink of death due to critical conditions and the absence of dialysis for days. He accused Israel of besieging the hospital, sabotaging sections, and spending the last 48 hours freely roaming within its premises. <\/p>\n
In another announcement, the IDF\u2019s Hagari said Thursday that soldiers had also unearthed a tunnel at the Al-Rantisi children\u2019s hospital in northern Gaza. <\/p>\n
On Wednesday, US National Security Council spokesman\u00a0John\u00a0Kirby\u00a0reiterated previous statements from the White House saying the US had intelligence that Hamas was operating in Al-Shifa Hospital. <\/p>\n
\u201cI would say we are comfortable with our own intelligence assessment about the degree to which Hamas was and is using al-Shifa hospital as a command and control node and as a storage facility underneath. We\u2019re very comfortable with our own intelligence assessment for that,\u201d\u00a0Kirby\u00a0said. <\/p>\n\n
The United Nations\u2019 human rights chief has called on Israel to give his team access to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, after Israel\u2019s military released video of what it called a Hamas \u201coperational tunnel shaft\u201d in the complex\u2019s grounds, a claim immediately rejected by the militant group and medical administrators as \u201cridiculous.\u201d The video, released <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":11764,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11763","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11763"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11763\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11764"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}