In the supporting video, Israel accuses Hamas of using the hospital as a storage facility for weapons and hostages.

According to the IDF, several indications are that the health facility was used as a back base by Hamas, but also as a place to hold hostages after the October 7 attacks. In response, Hamas accused Israel of “spreading lies to destroy hospitals and cause the death of patients.”

Nearly a month and a half after Hamas terror attacks on Israeli territory, the question of more than 200 hostages in the Gaza Strip remains a central issue. As it advances into Palestinian territory, the Israeli military has been collecting various clues that show it has been, or still is, in hospitals that serve as Hamas rear bases.

In a more than two-minute video released on Tuesday evening, IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari shows the basement of Al-Randisi Children’s Hospital in Gaza, where the hostages are said to be held, as well as weapons caches and tunnels.

“I want you to realize that these munitions, explosives, ammunition, inside the hospitals, among the patients, then grenades, Kalashnikovs, rocket launchers. We are firing rockets from the hospitals,” he describes in this line.

Evidence that the hostages were gone?

In this video, the same Daniel Hagari claims that several clues, such as a baby bottle or a rope near a chair, suggest that the hospital may have been used to hold Israeli hostages after the October 7 attack.

Among these “evidences” was a motorcycle “with bullet holes” “used by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre.” “This is currently under investigation, but we also have information that confirms this,” he said.

In a photo posted on the account of IDF Lt. Col. Aviche Atrey, a document taped to a wall “in the basement of Al-Randisi Hospital” appears to list various tasks for the terrorists before, during, and after the October 7 attack. .

“This is a list of guards, where each terrorist writes his name, and each terrorist has his own group to protect the people here,” the military spokesman wrote in Arabic.

For its part, on Tuesday morning, Hamas responded to the publication, accusing Israel of “spreading lies about the destruction of hospitals and the deaths of patients.”

“closed area”

The Al-Randisi hospital district has been the scene of fierce fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas, which has tightened its grip on the northern Gaza Strip in recent days. In advance The Times of IsraelLast week, the Israeli army killed a Hamas commander who was holding a thousand Gazans hostage in a health facility.

On Monday morning, the Hamas government’s deputy health minister, Youssef Abo Rich, said the hospital’s patients and caregivers “were all evacuated” on Sunday “under threat of fire from the Israeli army.”

In a video shown to the press by the spokesperson, the suspected basement appears deserted and hastily abandoned. “It’s a closed area compared to the rest of the hospital,” he described.

“We can see improved ventilation, and the infrastructure built here – toilets, showers, a small kitchen – can meet the needs of terrorists,” he said.

Israel estimates that 239 people were abducted during the October 7 offensive by the Palestinian Islamic Movement, which killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians. In Gaza, the humanitarian situation is so dire that most hospitals are now out of service. In most of them, doctors are forced to attend to their patients in a rudimentary manner as electricity is cut off and patients are sent back.