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20-03-2024
JERUSALEM: Israel’s army said Monday it had killed a Hamas official inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa medical complex, an operation that unfolded as experts warned that the northern part of the enclave may already be in the grip of famine.
The White House, meanwhile, confirmed that Marwan Issa, the deputy commander of Hamas’s military wing, was killed in an Israeli strike earlier this month in central Gaza.
The highest-ranking militant commander to be killed in more than five months of war, Issa was believed by Israel to have played a central role in Hamas’s day-to-day military operations and to have helped plan its attack on Oct. 7.
“The rest of the top leaders are in hiding, likely deep in the Hamas tunnel network,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday. “And justice will come for them, too.”
The news of Issa’s death was overshadowed by the operation at al-Shifa, the latest Israeli attack on hospitals, which the Israel Defense Forces has said are used by Hamas as a cover for military activities. The assaults have damaged or shuttered a number of major medical facilities and, according to humanitarian groups, put Gaza’s health system on the verge of collapse.
Israel’s claims about the military significance of the operation at al-Shifa were swiftly contested by Palestinian officials, who identified the target of the raid as a police official. Civilians in the hospital said they were trapped by the fighting.
The IDF said in a statement that the raid had “eliminated” Faiq Mabhouh, a senior official within Hamas’s internal security division who was responsible for coordinating the group’s militant activities across the Gaza Strip. The Hamas-run Al-Aqsa TV network said that Mabhouh was a director of police operations who coordinated and protected aid deliveries. The Washington Post could not independently confirm his role.
Overall, 20 militants were killed in “various engagements” around the hospital, the IDF said, adding that money and weapons had been recovered from one of the buildings.
Once the enclave’s largest hospital, al-Shifa had “only recently restored minimal health services” after an Israeli raid on the facility in mid-November, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, posted Monday on X. “Hospitals must be protected,” he said, warning that fighting was “endangering health workers, patients and civilians.”
In going after Mabhouh, Israel appeared to continue a pattern of attacks on members of Gaza’s police force. Civil servants under Hamas’s prewar government, police officers played a key role guarding international aid convoys until last month, when Israel began targeting them. (Int’l News Desk)
