2023-11-22 23:15:39
9:15 p.m.: Israeli army takes media to see tunnels under al-Shifa hospital
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.
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.
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