The Israeli army showed a reinforced tunnel beside Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, complete with a bathroom, kitchen and an air conditioned meeting room that it said had served as a command post for Hamas fighters.

The tunnel shaft, some two meters (6-1/2 feet) high, was accessed through an outdoor shaft in the hospital complex grounds, which were once crowded with tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians the army said had served as a human shield from war.

"That's the way that they survive because they use the hospital as a human shield that protects them," said Colonel Elad Tsuri, commander of an Israeli armoured brigade that found the tunnel. "And here they can stay for a long time. There is a room with air conditioning inside."

Israel has long accused Hamas of using the Shifa hospital complex as a command and control center as part of a wider strategy that seeks to hide its forces among the civilian population.

Hamas and hospital officials have denied the accusation and the hospital site has been at the centre of accusations of war crimes on both sides, with Palestinians accusing Israel of targeting hospitals and Israel saying the sites were being used to shelter armed fighters.

Journalists were driven in Israeli military vehicles to the hospital complex in the northern Gaza Strip past a landscape of buildings destroyed or vacated during Israel's nearly seven-week-old invasion of the Palestinian enclave.

Graced with arches, the tunnel was a well-built structure lined with stone and concrete. Army escorts used flashlights to illuminate the way in the dark and showed a small kitchen, a bathroom equipped with a toilet and sink behind a closed door, as well as a room large enough for meetings with two metal beds.

"We assume that there is another way out that they prepared. It's not open yet and we are sure that there are ways to the city from here," Tsuri said. He said the army knew the tunnel led to another opening in a Gaza kindergarten.

Israel has faced international criticism for its Gaza campaign, including its attacks on Shifa, the enclave's largest hospital. Medical officials say Israel has killed around 13,000 people in the strip since Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Israel says 1,200 people were killed and 240 taken hostage.

Outside on the ground, the army showed scores of guns, grenades and other explosives that military spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari said had been collected in recent days inside the hospital, a motor home and nearby cars.

He said the body of one hostage, Noa Marciano, 19, had been recovered by the army outside a nearby medical clinic. Hamas earlier released a video saying she had died in an Israeli air strike. It was impossible to verify the claim.

In Washington, the White House has said its independent intelligence supported Israel's claim that Hamas was using Gaza's hospitals, including Shifa, to hide command posts.

Hamas responded at the time: "The White House and the Pentagon's adoption of the false (Israeli) narrative, claiming that the resistance is using Al Shifa medical complex for military purposes, was a green light for the occupation (Israel) to commit more massacres against civilians."

But Hagari, referring to Hamas' use of a hideout beneath the hospital, said: "The world now should say what happened in Shifa, what happened in the hospitals, is a war crime."

IDF claims tunnels prove command room under Gaza hospital.

The Israeli military shared video of tunnels under the al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Wednesday, claiming that the footage proves Hamas has used the hospital complex as a “command and control center.”

Videos shared by the IDF show soldiers walking through small, concrete-lined tunnels with sparse electric lights. Another video shows a tiled bathroom attached to the tunnels.

“Hamas has been systematically using hospitals in Gaza to run its terror machine,” IDF spokesperson Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari said. “Hamas built tunnels underneath hospitals, used them to command their operations…Hamas wages war from hospitals. This is the sick nature of the savage terrorists we are fighting.”

A separate IDF video shows firearms and military supplies, including grenades and drones, which a spokesperson claims were retrieved from the tunnels.

The IDF has long accused Hamas of operating within the tunnels underneath al-Shifa, which doctors and international aid organizations at the hospital have denied. The tunnels were built as part of the hospital’s construction by Israel in the 1980s, former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak told CNN this week.

After a raid of the complex last week, following days of surrounding the hundreds of doctors and patients inside the hospital, the IDF released videos showing small caches of weapons and supplies in some hospital rooms.

It is unclear how large the tunnel complex underneath al-Shifa is, or if the IDF videos show the entirety of the tunnels.

The videos provided so far fall well short of previous IDF claims, which described a vast military headquarters complex capable of permanently housing dozens of people, akin to an underground city.

A computer-generated approximation of the purported command center that the Israeli military published last month showed a complex similar to some early media portrayals of Tora Bora — the cave complex believed to house Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda leadership in Afghanistan.

Israel’s claims about al-Shifa and other Gaza hospitals have been at the center of the conflict in Gaza for weeks, as the Israeli military continues its ground invasion in a push south from Gaza City.

The six-week war in Gaza has waged on since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants killed over 1,200 people in a surprise attack on Israel. An Israeli air and ground campaign has since killed over 12,000 Palestinians, including over 4,600 children.

The two sides of the conflict agreed to a four-day pause in the fighting Tuesday in order to free about 50 of the approximately 240 hostages held by Hamas. The pause is set to to go into effect later this week.