UPDATE 2 - Israeli army abducted 9 doctors from Nasser Hospital, executed hundreds inside: Gaza media office

By Rania Abu Shamala

ISTANBUL (AA) - The Israeli army executed hundreds of displaced, sick and injured people during a raid on the Nasser Medical Complex in the city of Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip during a ground operation that lasted for four months, the Gaza Media Office said Wednesday.

“The depth of the mass graves we found (in Nasser Hospital) confirms that they were dug using large machinery such as Israeli occupation bulldozers and other vehicles,” the head of the media office, Ismail Al-Thawabteh, told Anadolu.

“The Israeli army abducted nine doctors from the Nasser Medical Complex to an unknown location and committed the crime of enforced disappearance against them,” Al-Thawabteh added.

The head of the Gaza media office identified some of the doctors abducted as Ahmad Mousa, Bayan Shurrab, Iyad Shaqoura, Mahmoud Shehada, Ahmad Al-Smairi, Nahed Abu Taima, Khalid Al-Ser, and Alaa Barbakh.

“Some of the martyrs who were identified were alive when the occupation army stormed the Nasser Medical Complex, and when they (Israeli army) came out, the governmental teams found them buried, and this was confirmed by the families of the martyrs who were in contact with their sons before the hospital was stormed,” he said.

“The Israeli army threatened pregnant women, prevented them from receiving medical care and hindered access to doctors for them. They also bombed some sections inside the Nasser Medical Complex, set some on fire and killed some of the wounded who were inside the complex,” he added.

Al-Thawabteh said the Israeli army “stormed the Nasser Medical Complex with tanks, threatened medical staff, patients and the injured, prevented them from receiving treatment and confined them in an old and narrow building within the complex.”

“There are many missing members of medical teams whose fate the occupation (forces) have refused to declare. We believe that they have been executed and buried, and the process of recovering the bodies is still ongoing, and we expect to find some of them,” added the official.

“It is not strange for the occupation (forces) to commit such crimes and massacres, as it repeated the same crime in the Al-Shifa Medical Complex (in western Gaza City), where government teams found two mass graves from which dozens of martyrs, including medical personnel, displaced persons, patients, and wounded, who were executed by the occupation, were recovered. Among them were women and children with clear signs of execution,” Al-Thawabteh said.

“The occupation (forces) also committed the same crime in the Kamal Adwan Hospital (in northern Gaza), where it established a mass grave, burying dozens of bodies with bulldozers,” he added.

On April 7, the Israeli army withdrew from Khan Younis after four months of launching a ground operation there, which included the storming of the Nasser Medical Complex. The operation aimed to retrieve Israeli captives held by the Palestinian group Hamas, but the army left the city without achieving its objectives.

Israel has launched a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 34,200 Palestinians have since been killed and 77,200 others injured amid a tight siege imposed by Israel which left the entire population, especially residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

More than six months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins, pushing 85% of the enclave’s population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine, according to the UN.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.