A Hamas terrorist who was employed at the Kamal Adwan Hospital told Israeli interrogators that Gaza terror groups use the hospital because “they think it’s a safe haven” that the IDF will not attack, in footage released by the Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday.
In the video, 21-year-old Anas Mohammad Faiz a-Sharif says he joined Hamas’s Nukhba forces in 2021 and also worked at the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia as a cleaning supervisor. Hamas has been regrouping in the northern Gaza areas of Beit Lahia, Beit Hanoun and Jabaliya.
“There were Hamas and Islamic Jihad operatives from the Al-Nasser Division and different organizations from the northern Gaza,” a-Sharif said.
“They think it’s a safe haven for them because the army cannot attack it directly,” he said.
Asked what the terrorists do in the hospital, a-Sharif said the hospital was used for transferring equipment and weapons, “guns, like Kalashnikovs, bullets and pistols” as well as grenades and mortars, which were transferred by tunnels to other command and control centers “in Kamal Adwan, Falujah [refugee camp in Jabaliya] or other places.”
In December 2023, Ahmed Kahlot, director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, confirmed to Israeli interrogators that he and other staff were Hamas operatives. During the interrogation, Kahlot described how Hamas used hospitals and ambulances to hide operatives, launch military activity, transport members of terror squads and even deliver a kidnapped Israeli soldier.
In an October 2024 raid, soldiers arrested dozens of Hamas gunmen barricaded inside the hospital and seized large amounts of weapons, funds and intelligence documents.
Eighty-five percent of Gaza’s hospitals have been used by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad for terror according to the military.
As reported by The Press Service of Israel in 2023, Hamas made extensive use of the Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest medical center. Hamas launched rockets from its compound, hid hostages in the bowels of the building, tortured collaborators, and dug tunnels connecting Shifa to nearby sites. Israel also released a recording of a phone call confirming that Hamas also stores at least a half-million liters of fuel underneath the compound.
In March, Israeli forces raided Shifa after learning that Hamas established a small government administration center there. On the day that Israeli forces entered the Shifa compound, Hamas was about to pay salaries to hundreds of its civil and military officials. Soldiers arrested more than 800 terrorists.
Other Gazans have told Israeli interrogators Hamas deeply embedded itself in the Palestinian Red Crescent Society to use hospitals as a base for attacks.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 97 remaining hostages, more than 30 have been declared dead. Hamas has also been holding captive two Israeli civilians since 2014 and 2015, and the bodies of two soldiers killed in 2014.
