The Israeli army claimed yesterday to have killed "about 20 terrorists", including the alleged Hamas leader Faiq Mabhouch, during the military assault on the Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City, in which a Jewish soldier also died.
Mabhuoch was allegedly the head of Hamas' internal security, responsible among other things for coordinating the Islamist group's activities in the Gaza Strip, the Israeli army said in a statement.
“Faiq Mabhouch was eliminated in a confrontation with troops while he was armed and hiding in the Al Shifa hospital compound, from where he operated and promoted terrorist activity,” the military statement said.
The army noted that in the operation, carried out together with the internal intelligence service, the Shin Bet, numerous weapons were found in the room adjacent to where Mabhouch was "eliminated" and that dozens of arrested people "are being interrogated."
However, Palestinian sources indicated to the Efe agency that Mabhouch was a simple police officer who was in charge of guarding the aid trucks that arrived in Gaza City until their contents were unloaded in warehouses of UNRWA, the United Nations Agency. United Nations for Palestine Refugees, which Israel repeatedly accuses of having links with Hamas, without having shown any conclusive evidence.
In the exchange of fire between Israeli troops and Palestinian guerrillas in the area, Sergeant Matan Vinogradov, 20, of the Nahal brigade, was killed, bringing the number of casualties in the Jewish ranks since the ground offensive began within the enclave. It now rises to 250.
The Israeli army besieged the hospital early yesterday morning, with tanks and snipers, and attacked the health center for the fourth time since the war in the strip began, causing deaths among the more than 30,000 displaced people who take permanent refuge in that facility, according to denounced the Gaza Ministry of Health. This portfolio, controlled by the Hamas Government, assured that the Israeli operation within Al Shifa produced “martyrs.”
“Following intelligence information indicating the presence of terrorists in the Al Shifa hospital area and its use to carry out terrorist activities, the forces are carrying out a precise operation to thwart the terrorist activity and arrest the terrorists in the hospital grounds,” indicated the Israeli army during the early hours of yesterday to report on the military operation.
It is the fourth time that Israel attacks that hospital, the largest in the enclave, claiming to have detained 80 suspects of “terrorism” in that facility, where the army claims that Hamas guerrillas had regrouped.
The first time that Israeli troops besieged the health center was in November, when they kept it surrounded for more than ten days, ordering the evacuation of thousands of displaced wounded and sick people and detaining some of the medical staff, including its director.
The new operation on Al Shifa shows that Israel does not militarily control either the capital of Gaza or the north of the enclave, as it reported months ago, nor has it managed to get all the Gazans in that area to move to the south.
