Israeli military launches new raid at Gaza’s largest hospital

The Israeli military launched an operation on Monday against Gaza’s largest hospital facility, Al-Shifa, where thousands of people are sheltering.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claimed that “senior Hamas terrorists” were using the facility to “conduct and promote terrorist activity.” Later Monday, Israel said that “terrorist forces” were firing at IDF troops. CNN cannot independently verify these allegations.

The IDF ordered residents and displaced persons near the sprawling medical complex in northern Gaza to withdraw to what it called a “humanitarian zone” further south. However, those warnings came after the hospital had already come under siege, according to one witness.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza said about 30,000 people were inside Al-Shifa seeking refuge and that those attempting to leave were being targeted by snipers and fire from helicopters. Hamas accused Israel of striking targets “without regard” to the patients or medical staff inside – a claim echoed by people at the complex.

“Military vehicles are firing at the hospital buildings’ windows, and at anyone who is caught moving between the hallways,” Hamada Abdelhadi, a displaced Palestinian man seeking shelter at Al-Shifa, told CNN.

Targeting hospitals in wartime is prohibited under international law, but those standards change if enemy combatants are using the facility to attack an enemy.

The IDF said it would “act in accordance with international law” and had instructed troops on the importance of “operating cautiously, as well as on the measures to be taken to avoid harm to the patients, civilians, medical staff, and medical equipment.”

Eyewitness accounts described chaotic scenes both in and around the complex. CNN footage filmed about a kilometer (about .62 miles) away from Al-Shifa shows the impact on the wider area, with injured people amid the debris, and bodies being pulled from the rubble.

Videos aired by Al Jazeera showed massive plumes of smoke from airstrikes in the vicinity of the hospital, with nearby streets covered in the dust and debris from bombed out buildings. In one video, people could be seen frantically going through the rubble to dig out the seeming lifeless body of one young victim. Another showed families running in terror after a deafening missile strike.

One witness who lives in nearby Gaza City told CNN he had seen “a big invasion of tanks” headed toward Al-Shifa.