By ZEKE MILLER (AP White House Correspondent)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is “confident” that Palestinian militant teams used Gaza’s largest hospital to carry “at least a few” hostages seized throughout their bloody Oct. 7 assault and to accommodate command infrastructure, an American intelligence evaluation declassified Tuesday and shared by a U.S. official discovered.
The evaluation gives the firmest U.S. help for Israeli claims in regards to the Shifa hospital advanced, which was raided by Israeli forces in November in an operation decried by international humanitarian organizations and a few members of President Joe Biden’ s celebration. Yet the data launched doesn’t totally again a few of Israel’s most vital allegations that the hospital served because the central node for actions by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The U.S. official shared the evaluation on the situation of anonymity.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident in its judgment on this topic and has independently corroborated information on HAMAS and PIJ’s use of the hospital complex for a variety of purposes related to its campaign against Israel,” the evaluation states. It continues that it believes the teams “used the al-Shifa hospital complex and sites beneath it to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command and control activities, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages.”
The U.S. believes that Hamas members evacuated days earlier than Israel raided the advanced on Nov. 15 and that they destroyed delicate paperwork and electronics earlier than Israeli troops entered the power.
U.S. officers had beforehand pointed to categorized intelligence, obtained independently from the Israelis, to supply help for Israel’s raid.
“I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby instructed reporters a day earlier than Israel entered the hospital.
Gaza’s hospitals have performed a central position within the dueling narratives surrounding the struggle that the Hamas-run Health Ministry says has killed 22,100 individuals — although it doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants. Hospitals take pleasure in particular protected standing underneath the worldwide legal guidelines of struggle. But they will lose that standing if they’re used for navy functions.
Before the raid on the hospital, the Israeli navy unveiled an in depth 3D mannequin of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital exhibiting a collection of underground installations that it mentioned was a part of an elaborate Hamas command-and-control heart underneath the territory’s largest well being care facility. The Israeli navy has but to unveil any infrastructure almost as sprawling and developed because the purported heart.
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