Israeli forces have been shooting anyone who moves inside Al-Shifa or gets close to the windows.
Israeli forces beat up and arrested Al Jazeera’s correspondent Ismail Alghoul from inside the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday during the deadly raid on the facility.
Witnesses and reporters on the ground confirmed that Israeli forces severely beat up Alghoul before taking him to an undisclosed location along with other men and women.
Israel arrested other journalists while destroying broadcast vehicles belonging to the press crews at the hospital, according to Al Jazeera.
Alghoul is Al Jazeera Arabic’s main correspondent at the medical facility, which Israel has isolated since last October when it carried out another deadly raid.
Israel has attempted to justify the brutal assault by claiming that Hamas members were hiding at the facility, echoing past claims that have been widely dismissed as baseless by numerous independent investigations.
Al Jazeera English’s correspondent, Hani Mahmoud, said Israel detained more than 80 people from the medical complex. Mahmoud added that the raid started after a group of special forces in civilian clothes entered the hospital.
Medics, displaced and wounded Palestinians have been trapped inside the hospital since the beginning of the raid on Monday morning. Israeli forces have been shooting anyone who moves inside Al-Shifa or gets close to the windows.
Israel had ordered approximately 1.1 million people to evacuate northern Gaza to the south on 12 October 2023 and occupation forces raided the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the largest in Gaza, the following month.
The occupation forces then kidnapped Al-Shifa Hospital’s director Muhammad Abu Salmiya, on November 23 and his whereabouts remain unknown.
During the early days of the war on Gaza, Al-Shifa was the main shelter for thousands of Palestinians and where the press was mainly reporting from.
The hospital is also the location where officials in Gaza held press conferences while being surrounded by bloody body bags of people killed by Israel.
Since October 7, 2023, Israel has killed at least 31,726 Palestinians while wounding at least 73,792 others.
The press, including Al Jazeera’s crew, have been among Israel’s main targets since the beginning of the war.
This was evident on October 25, 2023, when Israel killed four members of prominent Al Jazeera journalist and Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh’s family.
Israel killed Dahdouh’s wife, 15-year-old son, seven-year-old daughter and infant grandson in a strike in southern Gaza, despite Israel declaring the area to have been a safe zone.
Dahdouh was then injured on December 15 in an Israeli airstrike at the Farhana school in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, where Al Jazeera’s cameraman, Samer Abu Daqqa, was killed.
Abu Daqqa succumbed to his injuries after bleeding for six hours. Israel prevented medics from reaching him by bombing the area nonstop and denying him access to ambulances.
Israel then killed Dahdouh’s eldest son, Hamza, on January 7 when it targeted his vehicle in Gaza alongside Palestinian journalist Mustafa Thurayya.
Meanwhile, Israel decided to go forward with its plans to invade Rafah, where more than one million displaced people have been sheltering over the past five months.
Israel had declared Rafah to be a safer zone after forcing hundreds of thousands to evacuate northern Gaza and Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City.
The latest raid on the hospital is taking place as talks begin in Qatar over a possible truce. Israel sent a delegation to the Gulf state for another round of negotiations in hopes of reaching a breakthrough following a prolonged stalemate.
Israel’s negotiators will offer a six-week truce in Gaza for the release of 40 captives from Hamas during the talks in Qatar this week, Reuters reported on Monday, citing an Israeli official.
