Hamas is using ambulances to transport terrorists and weapons around Gaza, an Israeli military spokesman said on Friday.
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit said on Friday that an aircraft struck an ambulance in the Gaza Strip, which, according military intelligence, was being used by a Hamas unit very close to the combat zone. The military added that several terrorists were killed in the strike near Gaza’s Shifa Hospital.
As reported by the Tazpit Press Service, Hamas makes extensive use of Shifa Hospital. Knowing that Israel would not dare attack a hospital during a war, Hamas leaders hide there, launch rockets from its compound, hide hostages in the bowels of the building, torture collaborators, and dig tunnels connecting Shifa to nearby sites. On Friday, Israel released a recording of a phone call confirming that Hamas also stores at least a half-million liters of fuel underneath Shifa.
The ambulance issue raised a commotion at the United Nations, where UN Secretary-General António Guterres posted on X, formerly called Twitter, that he was “horrified” by the Israeli attack on the ambulance.
“Now, for nearly one month, civilians in Gaza, including children & women, have been besieged, denied aid, killed & bombed out of their homes,” Guterres tweeted. “This must stop.”
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan responded on X to accuse Guterres of lying.
“once again, you rush to condemn Israel without even bothering to ask what happened. You blatantly lie regarding the lack of aid entering Gaza, and you completely ignore the fact that Hamas intentionally exploits ambulances for terror,” Erdan tweeted.
“You didn’t ask for the truth bc [because] you don’t care about the truth,” Erdan added. “Instead, you prefer to falsely condemn Israel while making our hostages a literal footnote. It’s absolutely disgraceful. Where was your ‘horror’ when Hamas deliberately targeted Israeli ambulances with RPGs and executed paramedics in cold blood?”
Also on Friday, a senior US official in the Biden administration told reporters that Hamas unsuccessfully tried to evacuate some of its injured fighters out of Gaza in ambulances along with thousands of foreign nationals trying to flee the Strip. Egyptian and US officials at the Rafah crossing who vetted the list of evacuees found that 76 people — one-third of the list — were members of Hamas terror squads.
The US official added that Hamas repeatedly offered lists of evacuees that contained its injured personnel. In the end, nobody connected to the terror group was let out. The official added that the issue caused a significant delay before the wounded Palestinians were finally allowed to leave.
