Hamas uses hospitals and other protected places like schools and mosques for terrorist purposes. Since 2006, when the terror group took over the Gaza Strip, we have seen report after report showing just that.

Uncovering terrorist infrastructure: IDF soldiers on the grounds of Al-Shifa hospital.

Back then, an American Public Broadcasting Service documentary showed Hamas gunmen prowling the corridors of Al-Shifa Hospital, intimidating staff and denying access to protected areas. In 2014, a Washington Post journalist reported that the hospital “has become a de facto headquarters for Hamas leaders”. In 2015, Amnesty International said that Hamas interrogated and tortured prisoners in Al-Shifa.

Yet since Israel launched its ground invasion of Gaza, this has suddenly come into question. IDF explanations for raids into civilian buildings, especially hospitals, have been treated with disbelief and even hostility. This is despite CCTV images of hostages being rushed around the Al-Shifa hospital, and evidence of a tunnel leading underground from within the complex. Captured Hamas terrorists have confirmed the use of hospitals for their terrorist cause and even Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, admitted in a speech in 2021 that the group used civilian infrastructure for military purposes.

Chief among those questioning what ought to be clear facts, inevitably, has been the BBC and its international editor, Jeremy Bowen. After the IDF displayed weapons seized at Al-Shifa, he gave an on-air diatribe implying that this was not convincing evidence that Hamas had a base in the hospital. He even suggested the pile of weapons could belong to the “security department”. Perhaps it is a coincidence that Bowen’s claim directly echoed the words of a senior Hamas terrorist on Al Jazeera two days earlier.

US intelligence confirms Al-Shifa has been used as a military headquarters. But terminology used by the White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, that it housed a command “node” rather than a command centre as the Israelis described it, suggests a desire to underplay its significance. It’s hard to understand such pedantry when any military use of a hospital is illegal under the laws of war and renders an otherwise protected site a legitimate target for combat operations.

This has much broader implications for this war. Many people don’t want to believe the Israelis; it seems they would rather believe Hamas. Media outlets often caveat announcements by the IDF, pointedly saying that what they claim cannot be independently verified. Rarely, however, are reports from Gaza questioned in such a way, when every word coming from any part of the Strip that is still dominated by Hamas should be seen as being spoken under duress, whether by journalists, doctors or UN officials.

Very often casualty figures from the Gaza Health Ministry are treated as if they come from the NHS, even though it is well understood that the ministry is ruthlessly controlled by Hamas.

Those who are pressing for a ceasefire weaponise Hamas’s casualty statistics. They ignore the reality that Hamas habitually has not only inflated these figures but also made no distinction between deaths of uninvolved civilians and terrorist fighters. Nor, of course, do they separate out casualties caused by their own rockets, of which a significant proportion have fallen short into Gaza since the war began. The IDF has been exclusively targeting terrorists, and although civilian casualties are tragically inevitable given Hamas’s use of human shields, there is no doubt that a high proportion of the reported deaths have been fighters.

The cynical agenda that lies behind blind acceptance of Hamas’s casualty figures accounts for the growing narrative that, despite years of evidence, Hamas miraculously no longer uses hospitals as military facilities and Israel is attacking such places without justification. Quite why the IDF would risk its own soldiers’ lives for no military purpose, as well as suffering the inevitable international opprobrium associated with operations in and around hospitals, is never explained.

Many who distort these realities to call for a ceasefire may be well meaning, but in practice they are saying Israel should stop defending its population and Hamas should live to fight another day. That is extremely dangerous.

Both the British and American governments have given the strongest support to Israel since the atrocities of October 7, and have rejected these demands for a ceasefire. But they ought to be going further, helping to educate the public and counteract Hamas’s disinformation.

There are lessons here from our approach to the war in Ukraine, for example with the MoD’s daily briefings, which both puts the war into its real context and dispels Russian propaganda. Instead, when threatened with terrorists, our political leaders seem happier to take the terrorists’ side in the media war, playing into Hamas’s hands by virtue-signalling implications that Israel is not adhering to the laws of war and is inflicting unnecessary civilian casualties when they know that this is not true.

IDF says video shows Hamas tunnel near al-Shifa hospital.

The Israeli Defense Forces have released video of what it says is a more than 180-foot-long Hamas tunnel buried more than 30 feet underneath the Shifa hospital complex, what they say is evidence for allegations that Hamas uses the Gaza Strip’s largest medical center as cover for its command center to plan attacks against Israel.

Israel’s military released two videos on Sunday seeking to demonstrate the entrance to the tunnel shaft and the proximity to Shifa hospital. The New York Times reported that its journalists viewed the tunnel shaft entrance on the grounds of Shifa while escorted by the IDF, verifying its location.

Israel accuses Hamas of cynically operating a command center under al-Shifa hospital, an allegation that the Biden administration says U.S. intelligence supports. President Biden has defended Israel’s military incursion into the hospital as justified, saying Israel has an obligation to dismantle Hamas’s ability to carry out attacks.

In the first video, a drone appears to capture footage going down into the tunnel shaft that is at the center of an area of destruction and debris. The drone camera descends into the vertical tunnel, blocked by bent metal and concrete debris, and appears to show a metal, spiral staircase.

Another video shows what appears to be drone camera footage from a robot, descending into the tunnel, showing a staircase, traveling through a tunnel and then stopping at a door, that the IDF said is blast proof and includes a firing hold.

The IDF said that the tunnel shaft was uncovered in the area of the hospital underneath a shed alongside a vehicle containing numerous weapons, including rocket propelled grenades (RPGs), explosives and Kalshnikov rifles.

The IDF said it is continuing to uncover the route of the tunnel with the help of Israel’s Security Agency, the Shin Bet.

The video footage accompanies Israel’s further incursion into the hallways of the hospital where the IDF has shown what it says are weapons caches stored behind MRI machines and in hallways and rooms of the hospital.

The IDF has further said that Hamas had transferred hostages the group kidnapped from Israel on Oct. 7 to be held at the hospital. Israel published a video it said was taken from al-Shifa hospital cameras showing hostages – an Israeli woman, a Thai civilian and a Nepalese civilian – being held as prisoners in the health facility. The New York Times said that it verified the video footage is from the hospital but could not verify the hostages’ identities or the time of the video.

The IDF and Shin Bet, in a joint statement, said that the bodies of two hostages, an IDF soldier and a civilian, elderly woman, were found near the Shifa hospital.

Hamas denies that it has built a command center in and around the hospital and said that the “well being of injured Zionist prisoners was meticulously monitored,” and that the hostages were treated for medical injuries before being taken to different “places of detention.”

Israel has been condemned for carrying out its military operation into the Gaza Strip and into the hospital, in particular. A joint United Nations humanitarian assessment managed to enter the hospital in coordination with the IDF, and described the hospital as a “death zone” and the situation “desperate.”

The U.N. team, in an assessment published on Saturday, said that 25 health workers and 291 patients remained in al-Shifa, with several patient deaths occurring over the previous two to three days. Patients included 32 babies in extremely critical condition, two people in intensive care without ventilation and 22 dialysis patients whose “access to life-saving treatment has been severely compromised.”

The IDF on Monday said that over the last few days it has helped facilitate the evacuation of newborn Gaza babies from the pediatric ward of al-Shifa to receive medical treatment in Egypt.

Israel says new videos show Hamas hostages and a tunnel at Al-Shifa Hospital.

Israel sought to bolster its case that Hamas uses Gaza’s main hospital as a militant base by releasing video Sunday night of what it says are a tunnel underneath the medical complex, and — for the first time — hostages being taken there by the militant group.

Two of the clips show what Israel says are Hamas militants forcing hostages onto the premises of Al-Shifa Hospital on the morning of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack. NBC News used archive photos to confirm that the first clip does show the reception area of the hospital. Both are time-stamped just before 11 a.m. Oct. 7, although NBC News cannot confirm the accuracy of these timestamps, when the videos were taken or who appears in them.

At a news conference Sunday night, officials also released images of what it said were Hamas fighters taking captured Israeli military vehicles to the hospital on the same day. They also released footage that they said showed an underground tunnel below Al-Shifa.

The film was overlaid with computer graphics labeling the surroundings and appeared to show the tunnel with reinforced walls, a spiral metal ladder and a blast door. Hamas has denied building tunnels under medical facilities.

The IDF also said that an Israeli soldier, Cpl. Noa Marciano, whose body was found in Gaza last week, was in fact killed by Hamas at Al-Shifa. The militant group had claimed she was killed in an Israeli airstrike.

NBC News has not verified the claims.

The footage is Israel’s latest effort to link Hamas to hospital facilities following international condemnation of Israeli attacks and raids that have killed doctors, patients and civilians who had sought shelter there. The United States has supported its assessment that Hamas uses the hospitals as cover, although doctors at the facility and Hamas have denied it.

The images “prove that the Shifa Hospital was used as terrorist infrastructure,” said a joint statement issued Sunday night by the Israel Defense Forces and the Israeli Security Agency.

The Palestinian Health Ministry said the videos of hostages being taken to Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital showed that doctors there provide “medical services to everyone who needs them, regardless of their gender and race.”

Hamas dismissed the significance of the video, saying it had openly transferred some of its prisoners to hospitals after they were wounded by Israeli airstrikes.

The militant group, which is banned as a terrorist organization in the United States and Europe, launched the surprise attack Oct. 7 in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and around 240 others kidnapped. More than 10 weeks of Israeli airstrikes and ground assault following the attack have killed more than 13,000 Palestinians and displaced more than 1.6 million in the Gaza Strip, according to health officials in the besieged enclave.

Israel’s attacks on hospitals have been one of the main contested narratives of the war. The military claims Hamas operated a command center below Al-Shifa Hospital, which both Hamas and hospital staff members have denied. Its attacks on this and other medical facilities, ostensibly to target these militants but in which patients and medical staff have been killed, have been heavily criticized by humanitarian agencies as war crimes.

Israel has conducted  a public relations offensive to try to prove its case, although some of its claims have been disputed and only raised further questions of the legitimacy of its tactics.

Nevertheless, the footage released Sunday “is quite damning for Hamas,” in the opinion of Michael A. Horowitz, a Jerusalem-based analyst who is the head of intelligence at Le Beck International, a risk-management consultancy focused on the Middle East.

“Hamas could have gone to any number of hospitals that are closer to the border, if the purpose was just to provide medical support to the hostages — some of whom do not seem seriously injured,” he said. “The fact that they brought them specifically to the Shifa hospital, even if they did so briefly, means they felt very confident no information would leak out.”

In the first video, four people in plainclothes, at least one of whom is armed with what looks like an automatic rifle, pull another person into the hospital, as staff and other bystanders back away in apparent surprise. That video is time-stamped at 10:53 a.m. (3:53 a.m. ET).

In a second clip timestamped less than two minutes later, about a dozen people crowd around an injured person being brought in on a gurney. Four of the group are wearing medical scrubs, and one of them directs the patient, who appears to be bleeding from the arm or stomach, into another unseen room.

The group is not wearing medical clothing, and at least two are carrying what appears to be automatic rifles. Some of them bear close resemblance to those seen in the first video, and a number of them are in what appears to be heated discussions with the doctors.

A clock on the wall shows the time as just after 4 p.m., although the second hand is not moving, suggesting the clock is broken and this time is not accurate. The IDF and the Israeli Security Agency said these images show “hostages abducted from Israeli territory,” one Nepalese and one Thai national, who are “seen surrounded by armed Hamas terrorists,” who are “forcibly transporting” them into the building.

“These findings prove that the Hamas terrorist organization used the Shifa Hospital complex on the day of the massacre as terrorist infrastructure,” it said, and that the videos added to “previous evidence presented regarding Hamas’ use of the hospital area as infrastructure for its terrorist activities in a systematic and ongoing manner.”

The Palestinian Health Ministry in the impoverished and densely populated Gaza Strip, which is run by Hamas, said that the videos released by Israel merely showed doctors treating patients regardless of who they are.

“If what was stated in the video was accurate, this means that the hospital provided the required service through the best portal, which is intensive care,” it said in a statement. It added that Israel “bears full responsibility for the deterioration and collapse of health services” in Gaza, “which leads to hundreds of wounded and sick people dying, who could have been treated and their lives being saved.”

Izzat Al-Rishq, a member of Hamas’ political wing, said on the messaging app Telegram that his group has always said that it  “transferred many of the occupation’s prisoners to hospitals to receive treatment,” especially “after some of them were injured as a result of the occupation’s aircraft bombing them.”

Israel did say that it started bombing Gaza on the morning of Oct. 7 but it’s not clear if this happened early enough to explain the injuries of the people seen in the video.

What we know about what Israel says it has found at Al-Shifa.

Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, has become a flashpoint in Israel’s war against Hamas, which began when gunmen from the militant group crossed the border into Israel on October 7, killing around 1,200 people.

Palestinians and humanitarian agencies say the current fighting in and around Al-Shifa is proof of Israel’s wanton disregard for civilian life in Gaza, while Israel accuses Hamas of using the medical center as a shield for its operations. On top of providing medical care, the Al-Shifa Hospital had recently become a key shelter for thousands of Palestinian civilians fleeing Israeli bombardment.

Since launching its operation at the hospital on November 15, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have shown images of a tunnel shaft and military equipment, but have yet to show conclusive proof of the large-scale command and control center it alleges is there.

Hamas, the Gaza Health Ministry and hospital officials have denied Israel’s claims, saying that hospitals in the Strip have only been used to treat patients. Doctors in Al-Shifa have also sounded the alarm about deteriorating conditions inside the medical facility, which is struggling to meet patients’ needs amid supply shortages and the presence of Israeli troops.

The IDF is now under pressure to prove Israel’s long-standing assertion with its promise of “concrete evidence.” Its ability to continue its operation in Gaza, and the credibility of Israel, could be at stake as the number killed in Gaza surpasses 12,000, according to authorities in the Hamas-controlled Strip.

Here’s what we know so far.

What does Israel say?

For weeks, the IDF said Hamas has been using Gaza’s largest hospital as cover for what it calls terror infrastructure below ground. IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said Hamas had a command and control center or headquarters underneath the hospital complex grounds, which other senior Israeli officials have also insisted on.

In a presentation to the media last month, Hagari claimed that Hamas was directing rocket attacks and commanding operations from bunkers underneath the hospital building, which he said were linked to a network of tunnels that Hamas had dug underneath Gaza City.

The IDF also published an “intelligence-based” illustrated video of what it claims the Hamas headquarters under Al-Shifa looks like. The video shows a 3D diagram of the hospital, which moves to show an animated network of purported tunnels and operation rooms.

CNN cannot independently verify Israel’s claims that Hamas is operating a “command and control center” from the hospital.

The White House has backed Israel’s claims, saying that Hamas was storing weapons and operating a command node from Al-Shifa, citing US intelligence. But senior US officials have declined multiple times to expand on how they can corroborate Israel’s claims, as the US does not have a presence on the ground in Gaza.

What evidence has Israel provided?

Over the weekend, the IDF took CNN and other news organizations to a newly exposed tunnel shaft on the grounds of the Al-Shifa hospital complex that it says was used by Hamas.

The structure appeared to be substantial, with the remains of a ladder hanging over the opening and a pole that looked like a hub for a spiral staircase running through the middle of the shaft.

The IDF also released video – filmed on Friday – from inside the shaft, showing a staircase leading down into a concrete tunnel that the military said was 55 meters long and located 10 meters underground. At the end of the tunnel is a metal door with a small window, according to the video, which the IDF said it had not yet opened to the possibility that Hamas had booby-trapped it.

The video is arguably the most compelling evidence thus far that the IDF has offered that there may be a network of tunnels below the hospital. It does not, however, establish without a doubt that there is a command center under Al-Shifa.

The Israeli military on Sunday also presented several videos that it said illustrated Hamas’ presence at Al-Shifa hospital, including CCTV footage that appeared to show hostages being brought through the hospital itself and separate footage from inside a tunnel shaft on the medical compound’s grounds. CNN cannot independently verify the content of the videos.

The CCTV footage showed Hamas fighters moving a Nepalese hostage and a Thai hostage through the hospital on October 7, IDF spokesperson Hagari said. One appears to be frog-marched through the building, while another appears to be bleeding and is pushed on a gurney.

Hagari did not spell out how the IDF had acquired the videos, though he did say that Israeli intelligence officers were part of the operation inside the hospital to try to locate the hostages.

Hagari also dismissed suggestions that the hostages had been brought to the hospital because they were wounded, claiming that one of the two hostages in the videos was not injured and did not need medical treatment. They had been brought to the hospital first before being moved to hiding spots like nearby apartments, he said.

The shared CCTV footage comes after Israel’s military said it found the bodies of two Israeli hostages – a 65-year-old woman and an Israeli soldier – in the same neighborhood as Al-Shifa hospital.

The IDF had previously touted other alleged discoveries on the hospital grounds, saying soldiers located a room in Al-Shifa where they found “technological assets, along with military and combat equipment used by Hamas” for “terrorist purposes.”

Hamas has rejected those claims as “baseless lies.”

CNN analysis of separate footage published online by the IDF prior to visits from international media outlets suggests weaponry at Al-Shifa may have been rearranged.

An IDF video on November 15 showed a military spokesperson touring the facility, during which an AK-47 gun is seen behind an MRI machine. Fox News and the BBC were subsequently granted access to the hospital. In their reports filmed after the IDF clip, two AK-47 guns are visible in the same location. It is unclear where the second assault rifle came from.

The IDF told CNN the discrepancy between the military’s own video and the BBC footage was “due to the fact that more weaponry and terrorist assets were discovered throughout the day.”

“Suggestions that the IDF is manipulating the media are incorrect,” it said.

The United Nations has called for access to the site for an independent investigation into the competing allegations and warned that hospitals should not be used as battlegrounds for any side.

How has Hamas responded?

Israel’s allegations have been vehemently denied by Hamas, the Gaza Health Ministry, and hospital officials.

The director general of the Hamas-controlled health ministry, Dr. Medhat Abbas, told CNN that hospitals in the enclave “are used to treat patients only” and are not being used “to hide anyone.”

The health ministry responded to the images of hostages inside Al-Shifa released Sunday by the IDF by questioning their authenticity – but went on to say that if true, the pictures showed that hospitals in Gaza provided medical care to anyone who needed it.

In a statement issued Saturday before the release of the CCTV videos, Hamas said it had brought several hostages to hospitals for medical treatment after they were injured in Israeli air strikes.

After Israel launched its operation, Hamas accused the US of giving Israel “a green light … to commit more massacres against civilians” by amplifying what it called a “false narrative” that a militant command center lies somewhere inside Al-Shifa.

Why Al-Shifa matters and what’s happening to its patients

More than five days since the IDF raided Al-Shifa hospital, Israeli troops are still on hospital grounds, and the facility is still filled with patients and medical staff operating in dire humanitarian circumstances.

Doctors who are still at the hospital cannot treat patients due to heavy shelling in the past week. Fuel shortages and a lack of electricity prevent them running incubators for the babies. ICU patients and several neonatal babies in Al-Shifa have died in recent days.

A doctor inside Al-Shifa hospital told CNN Monday that staff movements around the complex were being restricted, and Israeli forces are questioning staff about Hamas and tunnels.

Dr. Ahmed El Mokhallalati, head of the burns unit, said the hospital is also running out of urgent requirements, including anesthetics, oxygen tanks, medicine and blood banks.

Israel’s Defense Ministry says it delivered more than 6,000 liters of water and 2,300 kg of food — including fish, canned food, bread, spreads and dates — over the weekend.

El Mokhallalati also told CNN that Israeli forces had removed about 200 bodies from the hospital’s mortuary as well as from mass graves recently dug on the site. “They brought two trucks and they have taken all the dead bodies out of the hospital,” he said.

Several days ago, Israel’s army spokesman Hagari dodged a question about whether Israel had taken bodies out of the hospital complex as part of its efforts to determine the fate of hostages kidnapped from communities in southern Israel on October 7.

A group of UN humanitarian workers visited Al-Shifa on Saturday, describing the hospital as a “death zone” where “signs of shelling and gunfire” were evident.

An Egyptian government official told CNN Monday that 28 of 31 premature babies that were evacuated from Al-Shifa to southern Gaza have arrived in Egypt through the Rafah crossing. The three remaining babies remained in Gaza but are still alive, the official added.

The sprawling medical facility of Al-Shifa, which sits in the western part of Gaza City, was built in 1946 when Gaza was still under British rule.

It has long been seen as the backbone of medical services across the besieged Gaza Strip, and Israel’s operations there have compounded a grim humanitarian crisis, Palestinian health officials have said.