JERUSALEM: The Israeli army said Friday its forces had taken into custody more than 20 people suspected of involvement in the October 7 attack during a raid on a Gaza hospital.
“The troops located weapons inside the hospital and apprehended dozens of terror suspects, including over 20 terrorists who participated in the October 7th massacre,” the army said in a statement.
The military operation was still ongoing at the Nasser hospital in the southern Gazan city of Khan Yunis, it said.
“The activity is based on IDF (army) intelligence indicating that Hamas terrorist activity is being carried out from within the hospital,” it said.
“Hamas has previously used the hospital as a launch pad to fire mortar shells, including during a Hamas attack last month, which was revealed in IDF radar imagery,” it said without giving other details.
During the raid, the Israeli army said its forces found mortar shells, grenades and additional weapons belonging to Hamas.
The army launched the operation at the hospital on Thursday, saying it had information suggesting hostages seized by Gaza militants in the October 7 attack that sparked the war had been held at the facility, and that bodies of some of the captives may still be inside.
But later on Thursday the army said it had “not yet found any evidence of this”.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that he rejected a plan for international recognition of a Palestinian state, saying such an initiative “would offer an enormous reward to terrorism”.
“Israel will continue to oppose unilateral recognition of a Palestinian state,” Netanyahu said in a post in Hebrew on social media platform X.
“Such recognition, in the wake of the October 7 massacre, would offer an enormous reward to unprecedented terrorism and would prevent any future peace agreement,” he said.
“Israel categorically rejects international diktats concerning a permanent settlement with the Palestinians,” he added, saying that a peace agreement could only result from “direct negotiations without preconditions”.
The health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza said that at least 28,775 people have been killed in the Palestinian territory during the war between militants and Israel.
The toll includes 112 fatalities over the past 24 hours, a ministry statement said, while 68,552 people have been wounded.
Four patients died due to lack of oxygen at one of the war-torn Palestinian territory’s few operating hospitals that had been raided by Israeli forces.
Israeli strikes on targets in south Lebanon killed five fighters from Hezbollah and the allied Amal movement, the groups said on Friday, adding to an uptick in violence causing international alarm.
Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said Israeli warplanes hit five villages in southern Lebanon overnight Thursday-Friday.
Hezbollah, the powerful Iran-backed Shiite movement, separately announced the death of two of its fighters, bringing to 12 the number killed since Wednesday.
