Israel says it found Hamas tunnel at Gaza hospital, recovered body of hostage

The Israeli military on Thursday (local time) said it found a tunnel shaft used by Hamas in an outdoor area at Al Shifa Hospital, the biggest medical facility in Gaza.

The UN Palestinian refugee agency, on the other hand, said there would be no aid deliveries to the Palestinians in the besieged enclave amid intense fighting between Israeli troops and Hamas terrorists.

Israel had conducted a raid on the Al Shifa Hospital on Wednesday, asserting that it was being used by Hamas as a control centre beneath the medical facility. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it found huge caches of weapons, ammunition and explosives at Al Shifa and at Al Quds Hospital, another medical facility in Gaza.

The body of a 65-year-old woman who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 was found near Al Shifa Hospital, the Israeli military said, CNN reported.

The woman, Yehudit Weiss, was kidnapped from the Be’eri neighbourhood by Hamas terrorists on the day when Israel was attacked. Her husband Shmuel was killed during Hamas’s attack on October 7, according to The Hostages and Missing Person’s Families Forum.

Israel’s ally US said it would neither share nor explain the intelligence inputs received on Hamas activities in Al Shifa Hospital.

“I am not going to talk about specific intelligence that may pass between the two of us,” news agency Reuters quoted White House spokesperson John Kirby as saying when asked if Israel had shared any intelligence on its raid at Al Shifa.

Hamas denounced the Israeli raid on Al Shifa Hospital and rejected claims of using the facility for military purposes. The group claimed it “was a repetition of a blatantly false narrative, demonstrated by the weak and ridiculous performances of the occupation army spokesman”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in an interview with CBS, said his country had “strong indications” that some hostages were held by Hamas in Al Shifa Hospital. Justifying the reason to raid, he said, “And it is one of the reasons why we entered the hospital.”

“If they were, they were taken out,” he added.

Netanyahu asserted that Israel had intelligence about the hostages. He said, “the less I say about it, the better.”

Communication services in Gaza went out of service once again as all energy sources supplying the two telecom firms ran out. And with the absence of fuel supplies, UNRWA, the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, said it was not possible to send aid deliveries to Gaza through the Rafah border crossing as it was not able to communicate with the truck convoys.

Israel has denied fuel imports into Gaza, asserting it could be used by Hamas to boost its military operations against its forces.

Palestinians have borne the brunt of Israel’s ground offensive on the enclave launched in response to Hamas’s sudden attack on the Jewish nation on October 7. The raid on Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza is part of Israel’s ground operation aimed at eliminating Hamas and its terror infrastructure, including tunnels.

The war has claimed around 1,200 lives in Israel and killed more than 11,000 people in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry in the Palestinian enclave.

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell visited Israel for the first time since the war broke out and met with Israeli Foreign Minister Eli Cohen. During the meeting, Borrell told Cohen that Israel should do much more to protect civilians in Gaza.

“I understand your rage but let me ask you not to be consumed by rage,” Borrell was quoted as saying by Reuters. In response, Cohan squarely blamed Hamas for the situation in Gaza.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke to Benny Gantz, a minister in Netanyahu’s war cabinet, over the phone. Both discussed the situation in Gaza and efforts to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas, the US State Department said.

Notably, Blinken urged Israel to take “affirmative steps to de-escalate tensions in the West Bank, including by confronting rising levels of settler extremist violence”, the State Department added.

Blinken had earlier met Gantz during his visit to Israel earlier this month.

Meanwhile, two Palestinians were injured in the West Bank city of Jenin in a raid carried out by Israeli forces on a refugee camp, the Times of Israel reported, citing the Palestinian Wafa agency. According to the agency, the Israeli troops were accompanied by military bulldozers.

Israel carried out strikes near the Syrian capital of Damascus and caused damage, Syria’s Sanaa news agency reported without elaborating. Syrian air defences were activated and intercepted some missiles launched by Israel in response.

Twenty-one years after it was published, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden’s ‘letter to Americans’ has gone viral with thousands of TikTok videos.

Osama bin Laden’s letter was written after the 9/11 attacks, the worst terror attack on US soil. It tries to justify the monstrous 2001 attacks and links them, among other things, to “…support to the oppressive Israelis in their occupation of our Palestine”.

The UK-based Guardian newspaper had the Osama bin Laden letter on its website since 2002 but pulled it down after the videos went viral.