Israel-Hamas LIVE: Israeli soldiers storm Gaza’s al Shifa hospital in ‘targeted operation’ to root out Hamas terrorists as doctors inside describe ‘terrifying’ situation for trapped patients

President Joe Biden on Wednesday said he had made it clear to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that a two-state solution was the only answer to resolve Israel-Palestinian conflict and said Hamas commited war crimes by storing weapons in a tunnel under a Gaza hospital.

‘You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military, under a hospital. And that’s a fact. That’s what happened,’ Biden said.

He also noted ‘I made it clear to the Israelis — to Bibi and his war cabinet — that I think the only ultimate answer here is a two-state solution.’

In a show of solidarity, non-Jewish activists and organizations – including a former congresswoman from Mexico and the founder of ‘Blacks for Trump’ – joined the March for Israel in Washington, DC, standing alongside over 200,000 supporters.

Among the diverse group of allies, the event on Tuesday also featured prominent speakers, including Christian Pastor John Hagee and Pakistani-American Muslim women’s rights activist Anila Ali.

Rosi Orozco, a former Mexican congresswoman known for her tireless efforts against human trafficking, was spotted at the front of the march, proudly holding a sign that read ‘Christians stand with Israel.’

Israel has claimed to have found ‘concrete’ evidence that Gaza‘s biggest hospital Al Shifa was being used as a terrorist base after hundreds of commandos raided it early yesterday.

The IDF revealed evidence of weaponry which it said proved the hospital was a terrorist base, with spokesman Lt Col Jonathan Conricus showing a duffel bag hidden behind a hospital MRI machine containing an AK47 assault rifle, grenades, ammunition and a uniform.

He also said a backpack contained ‘what appeared to be very important intelligence including a laptop’, and dadded that security cameras in one part of the hospital had been taped over.

Israel’s former deputy prime minister Gideon Sa’ar has told Jewish News that his country’s government will agree to a temporary ceasefire, the publication reports.

Sa’ar did not specify when a ceasefire will be called, but suggested it would be done so in order to facilitate the release of Israeli hostages being held inside Gaza.

‘[It will be] a temporary short ceasefire in order to get our hostages out. There are ongoing negotiations to achieve that. And it will be achieved. We will see a temporary ceasefire,’ he said, according to Jewish News.

Sa’ar served as Israel’s Justice Minister until 2022 and was a political opponent of prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His comments appear to contradict those of the prime minister who has previously ruled out a five-day ceasefire.

French authorities say they are investigating damage done to Jewish graves in a German World War I military cemetery.

It comes as anti-Semitic acts multiply across the country.

In the cemetery, situated in the Oise region north of Paris, 10 Jewish gravestones were discovered damaged, the local prefecture said.

Prosecutors said they immediately launched an investigation into the incident, with a racist or religious motive a possibility, they said.

More than 1,500 anti-Semitic acts and comments have been recorded in France since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said on Tuesday. There have been growing tensions in France, home to large Jewish and Muslim communities, as war rages in the Gaza Strip.

The German cemetery in memory of World War I (1914-18) contains 1,903 graves of German soldiers, both Christian and Jewish. The Oise prefect, Catherine Seguin, called the defacing of the headstones ‘despicable’.

The world is still waiting to see evidence of Hamas terrorists’ secret headquarters hidden beneath Gaza City’s main hospital — hours after heavily armed Israeli soldiers stormed the medical facility in front of terrified patients and doctors.

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The US did not give Israel any kind of green light for its raid on Gaza’s main hospital, the White House has said.

It added that such decisions were for the Israeli military to make.

‘We did not give an OK to their military operations around the hospital,’ National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters after Hamas said President Joe Biden was ‘wholly responsible’ for the raid.

This is not the first time the sprawling complex of buildings and courtyards that make up Gaza’s Al Shifa hospital has found itself in the middle of a conflict.

The complex is metres from Gaza City’s small fishing port and sandwiched between Beach refugee camp and the city’s Rimal neighbourhood. Its name comes from the Arabic word ‘healing’ – common for hospitals in the Middle East.

It was built in 1946 during British rule, two years before Britain withdrew from Palestine. It survived the Egyptian invasion in 1948 and two decades of Egyptian military rule over the Gaza Strip.

In 1967, Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and in subsequent years, there were regular clashes nearby which sometimes moved into the hospital grounds.

In 1971, The Times reported a gun battle between a Palestinian militant who hid under a bed in the nurses’ quarters and an Israeli army patrol.

And on December 9 1987, the first day of the First Intifada against Israeli occupation during which Hamas was formed, Shifa was again pulled into the conflict.

A story from Reuters’s archive describes an Israeli army helicopter circling the hospital three times, before flying low over the wall and dropping tear gas onto the hospital’s central courtyard – where civilians are sheltering today.

‘Palestinian orderlies, patients’ relatives and students scattered in panic, their eyes streaming. A youth picked up the grenade and threw it out into the street,’ the report said at the time. One person yelled that they thought they were under fire.

In 1994, Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat’s security forces saluted the Palestinian flag when it was raised over the hospital after Palestinians were granted limited self-autonomy in Gaza during the Oslo peace process.

Hamas won a surprise election victory in Gaza in 2006. The following year, Hamas staged a military takeover of Gaza, forcing Fatah, the secular group that has long dominated the Palestinian Authority, out of the enclave.

During the power struggle building up to that takeover, fighters from both Fatah and Hamas were treated at Shifa and other hospitals, under the understanding that neither would harm the other side’s wounded.

Hamas has ruled Gaza ever since, but the hospital is staffed by medics paid by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority based in the West Bank.

During a 2008-9 war in which more than 1,400 Palestinians and 13 Israelis were killed, Israel accused Hamas of using underground areas in Shifa to hide.

Hamas denied this, but Israel’s claim persists to this day.

The World Health Organization’s chief has said that the Israeli military incursion into Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza was ‘totally unacceptable’.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a press conference in Geneva that patients and staff must be protected even if hospitals were used for military purposes.

‘Hospitals are not battlegrounds,’ he said. ‘Israel’s military incursion into Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is totally unacceptable.’

The WHO, a UN agency, also said it was ‘urgently exploring’ the possibility for evacuating patients and medical staff from the facility.

‘To make sure this can be enabled, of course there is a need for safe passage and also for fuel for the ambulances,’ said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Peeperkorn said that according to the WHO’s latest information:

• 34 of 39 premature infants in the hospital were still alive.
• 82 bodies had been buried in a mass grave in the grounds.
• A further 80 bodies remained unburied.
• There was no oxygen, power or water at the hospital.
• There are 633 patients there in total, plus around 500 staff and up to 4,000 people sheltering in the hospital grounds.

There have been conflicting Israeli statements about the on-going raid at Al Shifa hospital, as the world continues to wait for more detail.

One senior Israeli military official has claimed IDF troops found weapons and ‘terror infrastructure’ during a raid of Al Shifa hospital today, Reuters reports.

The senior official, who declined to be named, told reporters that soldiers were operating in a part of the hospital away from where medics and patients were.

‘IDF (Israel Defence Forces) soldiers have already found weapons and other terror infrastructure. In the last hour, we saw concrete evidence that Hamas terrorists used the Shifa hospital as a terror headquarters,’ the official said.

However, speaking subsequently on CNN, military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hecht did not mention whether any arms had been found, but said more information would be provided during the day.

‘We understand that there’s a substantial Hamas infrastructure in the area, in the vicinity of the hospital. Potentially under the hospital, and it’s something we’re working on. It’ll take us time. This war is a complex war,’ Hecht said.

Hecht said the Israelis forces went into a specific area inside the hospital, adding: ‘There wasn’t an all-out attack.’

He said fire was exchanged before the Israeli soldiers moved into the hospital but there was ‘no engagement whatsoever’ once they had entered.

We will bring you more information when we have it…

Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Meirav Eilon Shahar, has expressed her country’s ‘indignation’ that the ‘foreign minister of Iran (Hossein Amir-Abdollahian) is in Geneva and meeting UN officials’.

Shahar said on X (formerly Twitter): ‘Iran has no place in the future of Gaza. It is part of the problem, not the solution.’

The Times of Israel reported the meeting was hosted by the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. The centre said it ‘routinely convenes closed-door consultations to support conflict mediation and resolution in various parts of the world.’

A fearless British man threw back seven grenades tossed into a bomb shelter by Hamas terrorists while protecting partygoers during the October 7 terror attack against Israel, terrifying footage shows.

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The Palestinian population should not pay the price for the atrocities committed by Hamas against Israel, France said on Wednesday, expressing ‘serious concern’ about Israeli operations inside the Al-Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip.

‘The Palestinian population should not be made to pay for Hamas’s crimes, even less so the vulnerable, injured or sick and the humanitarian workers who courageously continue their work in extremely dangerous conditions,’ the French foreign ministry said in a statement.

The head of UNRWA, the U.N. relief agency for Palestinian refugees, confirmed Wednesday that it has received 23,000 liters (6,000 gallons) of fuel that crossed into Gaza via the Rafah crossing, but called for more to be allowed to enter the besieged territory.

• The aid group says Israeli authorities allowed the fuel to enter under the restriction that it can only be used to transport aid into besieged Gaza.
• ‘This fuel cannot be used for the overall humanitarian response, including for medical and water facilities or the work of UNRWA,’ Philippe Lazzarini said in an online statement.
• UNRWA needs 160,000 liters (42,200 gallons) of fuel each day to complete ‘basic humanitarian operations,’ he added.
• Israel declared war on Hamas and barred fuel shipments after its attack on Israel on Oct. 7, saying the group would divert the supplies for military use.
• Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli defence body responsible for Palestinian affairs, announced early Wednesday that it would allow United Nations trucks to refill at the Rafah crossing on Wednesday. It said the decision was in response to a request from the United States.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned Wednesday there is no safe place for the Hamas terrorists behind the October 7 attacks and ‘no place in Gaza’ the army wouldn’t reach.

‘They told us we wouldn’t reach the outskirts of Gaza City and we did, they told us we wouldn’t enter Al-Shifa (hospital) and we did,’ he said hours after troops raided the territory’s biggest hospital.

‘There is no place in Gaza that we won’t reach.’

The United Nations humanitarian chief demanded Wednesday immediate action to ‘rein in the carnage’ in Gaza, after Israeli forces raided the Palestinian territory’s largest hospital.

‘As the carnage in Gaza reaches new levels of horror every day, the world continues to watch in shock as hospitals come under fire, premature babies die, and an entire population is deprived of the basic means of survival. This cannot be allowed to continue,’ Martin Griffiths said in a statement.

Just hours after receiving its first delivery of fuel since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7, the UN warned its operations in Gaza were on the brink of collapse.

‘To have fuel for trucks only will not save lives anymore,’ said Philippe Lazzarini, head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees. ‘Our entire operation is now on the verge of collapse,’ the UNRWA chief wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The Islamic Jihad militant group said Wednesday its armed wing brought down an Israeli drone in Gaza, where it is fighting alongside Hamas.

‘We shot down a Zionist (Israeli) Skylark drone and took control of it,’ said Islamic Jihad’s Al-Quds Brigades, as the war between Palestinian militants and Israel entered its 40th day.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday urged Israel to end the ‘indiscriminate killing of Palestinians’ in Gaza, in his sharpest criticism of Israel since since war against Hamas broke out over a month ago.

The Socialist premier reiterated he ‘stood with Israel’ in ‘its response to the terrorist attack’ carried out by Hamas in October, and promised his new government would ‘work in Europe and in Spain to recognise the Palestinian state’.

The U.N.’s top emergency relief official on Wednesday condemned reported Israeli military raids on Gaza’s embattled Shifa Hospital and insisted Hamas militants must not use it as a ‘shield’ for their activities.

Martin Griffiths underscored growing international concern for the plight of patients in the Gaza City hospital who are too sick or frail to be moved.

‘Look, Hamas must not, should not, use a place like a hospital as a shield for their presence,’ he said in a video statement. He added, ‘hospitals should not become a place of – a war zone – of danger.’

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday Israel was a ‘terror state’ committing war crimes and violating international law in Gaza, while repeating his view that Palestinian militant group Hamas was not a terrorist organisation.

Speaking to lawmakers in parliament, Erdogan also called on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to announce whether Israel had nuclear bombs or not, and added that the Israeli premier was a ‘goner’ from his post.

He said Hamas was a political party that had been elected by Palestinians.

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Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Tuesday the killing ‘of women, of children, of babies’ in the Israel-Hamas war must stop, sparking a strong rebuke from Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trudeau said at an event in British Columbia province:

The world is watching, on TV, on social media, we are hearing the testimonies of doctors, family members, survivors, kids who have lost their parents.

The world is witnessing this killing of women, of children, of babies. This has to stop.

Netanyahu hit back at Trudeau’s criticism and wrote on X:

It is not Israel that is deliberately targeting civilians but Hamas that beheaded, burned and massacred civilians in the worst horrors perpetrated on Jews since the Holocaust. While Israel is doing everything to keep civilians out of harm’s way, Hamas is doing everything to keep them in harm’s way.

Netanyahu said it was Hamas, not Israel, that should be held accountable.

The Red Cross on Wednesday voiced alarm over military activities at the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital that has been entered by Israeli forces who say they are tracking a Hamas command centre.

‘We are extremely concerned about the impact on sick and wounded people, medical staff, and civilians,’ the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said in a statement sent to AFP, insisting ‘all measures to avoid any consequences on them must be taken’.

More details now on the news that a fuel truck entered Gaza through the Rafah border today – the first such delivery since the Israel-Hamas war began on October 7.

• An Egyptian source told state-aligned Al Qahera News the fuel would be delivered to the United Nations ‘to facilitate the delivery of aid after trucks on the Palestinian side stopped operating for lack of fuel’.
• COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body that handles Palestinian civil affairs, had said earlier that ‘UN trucks transporting humanitarian aid through the Rafah crossing will be refuelled at the Rafah crossing, per US request.’
• Witnesses at the Egyptian border said two more trucks were waiting to pass through the crossing.

The United Nations children’s agency says its top official visited the Gaza Strip early Wednesday and met with children and their families in the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the south of the territory.

‘What I saw and heard was devastating. They have endured repeated bombardment, loss and displacement,’ UNICEF Executive Director Catherine Russell said. ‘Inside the Strip, there is nowhere safe for Gaza’s one million children to turn.’

She added: ‘The parties to the conflict are committing grave violations against children; these include killing, maiming, abductions, attacks on schools and hospitals, and the denial of humanitarian access – all of which UNICEF condemns.

‘I am here to do whatever I can to advocate for the protection of children. I once again call on all parties to ensure that children are protected and assisted, as per international humanitarian law. Only the parties to the conflict can truly stop this horror.’

The first fuel truck has entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt via the Rafah border, according to Egyptian media.

• It comes after Israeli defense officials said they have agreed to allow fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian operations.
• It is the first time that Israel has allowed fuel into the besieged territory since the Hamas militant group’s bloody cross-border invasion on October 7.
• Israel declared war and barred fuel shipments after the attack, saying Hamas would divert supplies for military use. But fuel is key to operations at Gaza hospitals, which run on generators, and the shortages hindered the United Nations from delivering humanitarian aid.

This is a breaking news update, more details to follow…

Israeli forces are now massed near the gates of Gaza City’s main hospital, ready to storm the labyrinth of tunnels they say are underneath the medical centre where Hamas terrorists lie in wait.

Their aim is to enter the 300 mile network of tunnels that are below the Al-Shifa hospital and Gaza City as a whole and annihilate the terrorists who rampaged through Israel and slaughtered 1,200 Israelis.

But that is no easy task. Subterranean fighting is notoriously lethal work, especially when Israeli soldiers are fighting against heavily armed Hamas terrorists who know every hiding place and have access to a stash of rockets, grenades and guns.

The terrorists have operated within the complex network of reinforced tunnels underneath civilian buildings for years, some of which are buried up to 40ft underground and all of which could conceal an ambush, be booby-trapped – or worse – filled with explosives and primed to cave in.

This means the Israeli military will have to draw on a variety of technology and weaponry – like ‘killer’ drones, attack dogs and ‘sponge’ bombs – to help their soldiers ‘destroy’ the terrorists deep within the tunnels.

Israeli forces raided Gaza’s largest hospital Wednesday, targeting what they say is a Hamas command centre in tunnels beneath thousands of patients and civilians seeking refuge from intense combat.

• Dozens of Israeli soldiers, some wearing face masks and shooting in the air, ordered young men to surrender, a journalist in contact with AFP said, as the army reported it conducted a ‘precise and targeted’ operation at the facility.
• Youssef Abu Rish, an official from the Hamas-run health ministry who was in the hospital, told AFP he could see tanks inside the complex and ‘dozens of soldiers and commandos inside the emergency and reception buildings’.
• The Israeli army described it as ‘a precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area’ of the facility. The Palestinian militants have repeatedly denied concealing a base at the hospital.
• After sharp warnings from the United States and others that Al-Shifa must be protected, Israel said the raid was being executed based on ‘an operational necessity’.

Israeli tanks have rolled into the al Shifa hospital compound while scores of soldiers stormed buildings including the emergency and surgery departments, which house intensive care units, as patients screamed in terror as part of their mission to root out the terrorists, medics trapped inside said.

Mohammed Zaqout, the director of hospitals in Gaza, said the patients who are trapped inside the medical facility are terrified after they saw the heavily armed soldiers storm the hospital in the early hours of this morning.

‘They are screaming, it’s a very terrifying situation. We can do nothing but pray,’ Zaquot said.

Israeli soldiers have stormed Gaza City’s main hospital to root out the Hamas terrorists US intelligence has said are hiding in underground command centre as Palestinian authorities have called for a ceasefire to evacuate trapped civilians.

The Israeli military entered the sprawling Al-Shifa hospital early Wednesday morning in a ‘precise and targeted operation against Hamas in a specified area’ of the facility, the IDF said, in what could be a pivotal moment in the bloody war.

Israeli soldiers and tanks had surrounded the hospital in recent days, where the IDF and US have insisted Hamas are hiding in underground tunnels beneath the building and using the patients as human shields – claims the terrorists deny.

But the storming of the hospital is a key moment in the war and will show once and for all whether Hamas terrorists have indeed based their secret headquarters underneath the hospital while using the most vulnerable civilians as human shields.

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