Amid the ongoing genocidal Israeli war against the Gaza Strip, the regime’s forces have reportedly turned the largest functioning hospital in the coastal sliver into a “military base.”
“Occupation forces detained a large number of medical staff members inside Nasser Medical Complex, which they (the forces) turned into a military base,” Gaza’s health ministry spokesman Ashraf al-Qudra said on Saturday.
The troops raided the hospital, which is located in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, on Thursday, attacking hundreds of displaced Palestinians, who were seeking shelter inside the facility from the ravages of the Israeli military campaign.
The Israeli military has claimed that it was hunting for Palestinian fighters inside the hospital, and had so far arrested 100 suspects.
The military has been using the claim to attack and lay sieges on Gaza’s hospitals ever since October 7, 2023, when it began the war against the territory in response to an operation staged by its resistance movements.
Nearly 29,000 Palestinians, mostly women, children, and adolescents, have died so far as a result of the brutal military onslaught.
Also on Saturday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed to carry out a ground invasion against the nearby southern Gaza city of Rafah, which is packed with hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees.
Netanyahu said critics calling for the regime not to mount military action against the city were effectively telling Tel Aviv to “lose the war.”
Last week, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli military to evacuate civilians from Rafah ahead of a planned ground operation.
The city has come to host some 1.5 million Palestinians, who have fled there from the warfare.
Aid organizations say Rafah’s evacuation will be nearly impossible, given the scale of devastation elsewhere in Gaza and the huge number of people who have been trapped in the besieged area.
