Israel-Hamas war: Footage shows ‘hostages taken to Gaza hospital’ as Israel admits their helicopter fired at festivalgoers
CCTV footage shows hostages being taken into Gaza’s largest hospital on October 7 as Israel admits its combat helicopter fired at attendees at the Nova music festival. Warning: Graphic
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Israel’s military has released security camera footage it says showed hostages being brought into Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza on October 7 after being kidnapped during Hamas’s attacks on southern Israel.
Al-Shifa has become a focal point for Israeli operations, with the army claiming Hamas uses it as a base. Hamas, and medical staff, have denied the accusations.
The first clip, which appears to be time stamped 10.53am on October 7, shows a man in shorts and a pale blue shirt being dragged through what looks like an entrance hall by five men, at least three of whom are armed.
In the second, seemingly time stamped 10.55am, an injured man in underwear is wheeled in on a gurney by seven men, at least four of them armed, as several men in blue hospital scrubs look on.
The footage has not been verified.
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“Here you can see Hamas taking a hostage inside … they’re taking him inside the hospital,” military spokesman Daniel Hagari said, describing the two men as hostages from Nepal and Thailand.
“We have not yet located both of these hostages,” he added. “We do not know where they are.”
The CCTV footage appears to have been shot on the morning that Hamas gunmen began storming southern Israel, killing around 1200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping some 240 others, according to Israeli authorities.
“These findings prove that the Hamas terrorist organisation used the Shifa hospital complex on the day of the massacre as terrorist infrastructure,” the military and intelligence services said in a statement.
Hamas dismissed the footage. It has repeatedly said it had taken several captives to hospital for treatment, “particularly because some had been wounded in air strikes” by Israel, senior political bureau member Izzat al-Rishq said in a statement.
“We have released images of all that and the army spokesman is acting as if he has discovered something incredible,” he added.
The Hamas authorities say Israel’s relentless military campaign has killed at least 13,000 people in Gaza, also mostly civilians and more than 5500 of them children.
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ISRAELI HELICOPTER ‘FIRED AT FESTIVAL-GOERS’ ON OCTOBER 7
An Israeli combat helicopter fired at attendees of the Nova music festival during the Hamas assault on the event on October 7, an Israeli police investigation has revealed.
The combat helicopter arrived at the scene to engage the attackers, claimed by Israel to be Hamas gunmen, but accidentally hit some of the revellers, according to Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
There report was based on Israeli police investigations and interrogations of captured Hamas members.
The growing assessment in Israel’s security establishment also found that likely didn’t have advance knowledge of Nova Festival and in fact saw it by chance and decided to target the party spontaneously.
According to a police source, the investigation also indicates that an IDF combat helicopter that arrived to the scene and fired at terrorists there apparently also hit some festival participants.
The police source also said the party was originally planned for Thursday and Friday, with an extra day on Saturday added only on Tuesday of that week, at the organisers’ request. The last-minute change strengthens the assessment that Hamas hadn’t known of the event.
AT LEAST EIGHT KILLED IN ISRAELI STRIKES ON INDONESIAN HOSPITAL
At least eight people have been killed at one of Gaza’s largest hospitals after Israeli forces surrounded the medical facility and bombarded the area.
At least two doctors at the hospital were also injured during the repeated strikes.
Staff at the Indonesian hospital are appealing for urgent help from the United Nations and the Red Cross and said the hospital was targeted overnight without prior warning.
Earlier, one of our Gaza correspondents, Safwat al-Kahlout, said that it looks like Israeli forces are going to repeat what happened at al-Shifa Hospital, and will also occupy the Indonesian Hospital.
Power has been shut at the hospital after its generator was hit by a strike, forcing its medics to operate on patients while using light from mobile phones, even as the bombardment went on.
The Palestinian news agency Wafa also reported that Israeli artillery fire damaged the second floor of the hospital.
Aside from the estimated 150 wounded patients being treated at the hospital and about 100 medical workers, thousands of Palestinians are also sheltering at the hospital after being displaced by Israeli bombardments.
31 MORE AUSTRALIANS EVACUATE GAZA INTO EGYPT
At least 31 more Australians have left Gaza through the Rafah crossing into Egypt on Monday morning.
Australian officials have assisted a total of 62 people to leave Gaza, including Australian citizens, permanent residents and family members as they continue to support 130 people who remain in Gaza and wish to leave.
ISRAEL SAYS SOLDIER MURDERED BY HAMAS
Israel military spokesman Daniel Hagari gave more details about the death of 19-year-old soldier Noa Marciano, who was taken hostage. The army announced on Friday that troops had recovered her remains in the area of Al-Shifa.
Hamas last week said that Marciano had been killed in an Israeli air strike and released a video appearing to show her corpse with no visible marks apart from a head wound.
Hagari said Marciano was being held by the militants very close to Al-Shifa hospital.
“During ongoing combat in the vicinity of where she was held captive, Noa’s Hamas captor was killed and Noa was injured,” he said, stressing that her injuries “were not life-threatening”.
Hagari said that a pathology report determined that although Marciano was injured in an Israeli strike, she was not hurt “in a life-threatening way”.
19 year old CPL Noa Marciano was abducted and murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7.
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) November 17, 2023
Her body was found and extracted by IDF troops adjacent to the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
The IDF sends its heartfelt condolences to the family and will continue to support them. pic.twitter.com/f7eWBUrzVq
FRANCE SENDING WARSHIPS FOR MEDICAL AID
France is preparing to send its Dixmude helicopter carrier to the eastern Mediterranean to offer medical assistance in war-torn Gaza, the office of the French president said.
The Dixmude will set sail “at the start of the week and arrive in Egypt in the coming days,” President Emmanuel Macron’s office said.
A charter flight carrying more than 10 tonnes of medical supplies is also planned for the start of the week.
“France will also contribute to the European effort with medical equipment on board European flights on November 23 and 30,” the presidential office said.
It added that “France is mobilising all its available means to contribute to the evacuation of wounded and sick children requiring emergency care from the Gaza Strip to its hospitals”.
Macron said later on X, formerly Twitter, that up to 50 children could be flown for treatment in hospitals in France “if useful and necessary”.
PREMMIE BABIES EVACUATED FROM GAZA HOSPITAL
Palestinian medics evacuated 31 premature babies from Gaza City’s war-torn Al-Shifa hospital in a high-risk operation, the UN said, pledging to also move patients and staff who remain there.
Mohammed Zaqut, director general of hospitals in Gaza, told AFP “all 31 premature babies in Al-Shifa hospital … have been evacuated” and said “preparations are under way” for them to enter Egypt.
The infants were taken in Palestinian Red Crescent Society ambulances on Sunday to a hospital in southern Gaza for assessment and treatment, the WHO said in a statement, with 11 in critical condition.
Doctors found that “all the babies are fighting serious infections due to lack of medical supplies and impossibility to continue infection control measures in Al-Shifa Hospital”, it said.
None were accompanied by family members as the health ministry in Gaza had been unable to locate them, it added, and two babies had died at Al-Shifa while awaiting the transfer.
More than 250 patients and 20 health workers were still at Al-Shifa and plans were being made to evacuate them, the WHO statement said, but it would take “several days” to do so completely.
“Priority will be given to the 22 dialysis patients and 50 patients with spinal injuries,” it added.
‘HORRENDOUS EVENTS’ IN GAZA ‘BEGGAR BELIEF’
The level of violence ravaging Gaza in recent days is unfathomable, the UN rights chief said, with attacks on schools harbouring displaced people and a hospital turned into a “death zone”.
“The horrendous events of the past 48 hours in Gaza beggar belief,” United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement on Sunday.
Elsewhere in northern Gaza, a Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed on Saturday in twin strikes on Jabalia refugee camp, including on a UN school sheltering displaced people.
“The killing of so many people at schools turned shelters, hundreds fleeing for their lives from Al-Shifa Hospital, amid continuing displacement of hundreds of thousands in southern Gaza, are actions which fly in the face of the basic protections civilians must be afforded under international law,” Turk said.
He described the images purportedly taken in the aftermath of the reported Israeli strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school as “horrifying”, and “clearly showing large numbers of women, children and men severely wounded or killed”.
Turk said at least three other schools hosting displaced people had also been attacked in the past 48 hours.
“The pain, dread, and fear etched on the faces of children, women and men is too much to bear,” he said.
“How much more violence, bloodshed and misery will it take before people come to their senses? How many more civilians will be killed?
“Humanity must come first,” he said, stressing the desperate need for a ceasefire “now”.
IDF ‘FINDS 55-METRE TUNNEL UNDER GAZA HOSPITAL
The Israeli military said it had uncovered a tunnel under Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital that stretched 55-metres beneath the complex where troops have been conducting a major operation.
“IDF troops exposed a 55-meter-long terror tunnel 10 metres deep underneath the Shifa hospital complex,” which ran under the hospital and ended at a blast door, an army statement said.
The Israeli army said five more soldiers had been killed in fighting in the Gaza Strip, raising the number of troop deaths there to 64 since the war began.
US HOSTAGE DEAL TALKS ‘VERY CLOSE TO FINISH LINE’
Negotiations on an Israeli hostage deal are very close to the finish line, Deputy US National Security Adviser Jon Finer suggested.
“Many areas of difference that previously existed have been narrowed,” Finer told CBS show Face the Nation on Sunday.
“We believe we are closer than we have been to reaching a final agreement, but that on an issue as sensitive as this and as challenging is this, the mantra that nothing is agreed until everything is agreed really does apply,” he said.
It comes as a White House official confirmed that while efforts were continuing, no deal had been reached between Israel and Hamas.
US National Security Council Spokesperson Adrienne Watson tweeted: “We have not reached a deal yet, but we continue to work hard to get to a deal”.
She was responding to a report in The Washington Post that said a detailed, six-page agreement could mean hostage releases begin within days and could also lead to the first sustained pause in the conflict in Gaza.
According to the report, all parties would halt combat operations for at least five days while some hostages were released in batches, with overhead surveillance monitoring movement to police the pause.
GAZA-WEST BANK WILL ‘REUNITE’: BIDEN
In an opinion piece published in The Washington Post, US President Joe Biden said Gaza and the West Bank should eventually be “reunited” under a new Palestinian Authority.
“As we strive for peace, Gaza and the West Bank should be reunited under a single governance structure, ultimately under a revitalised Palestinian Authority, as we all work toward a two-state solution,” Mr Biden wrote.
“A two-state solution is the only way to ensure the long-term security of both the Israeli and Palestinian people. Though right now it may seem like that future has never been further away, this crisis has made it more imperative than ever.”
However, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted the Palestinian Authority “in its current form is not capable of receiving responsibility for Gaza”.
Mr Biden also threatened sanctions, including visa bans against settlers who have ramped up attacks on Palestinians in the West Bank in recent weeks.
GAZA’S LARGEST HOSPITAL HAS BECOME A ‘DEATH ZONE’
The World Health Organisation reported that Gaza’s largest hospital had become a “death zone” as Israel’s army said it was expanding operations to destroy Hamas.
Earlier, a Hamas health official said more than 80 people were killed in twin strikes on a northern Gaza refugee camp, including a UN school used as a shelter for people displaced by the Israel-Hamas war.
“At least 50 people” were killed in a dawn strike on the UN-run Al-Fakhura school in the camp, which has been converted into a shelter for displaced Palestinians, a health ministry official in Hamas-controlled Gaza told AFP.
UN humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths denounced the “tragic news of the children, women and men killed”.
“Shelters are a place for safety,” he posted on X, formerly Twitter. “Civilians cannot and should not have to bear this any longer.”
UNICEF head Catherine Russell wrote: “We’re seeing horrifying images of children and civilians killed in Gaza – yet again – as they shelter in a school which must always be protected. The carnage must end. The suffering must end.”
ISRAELI STRIKE KILLS 41 PEOPLE FROM THE SAME FAMILY
The Hamas-run health ministry in the Gaza Strip on Sunday said 41 members of one family were killed in an Israeli strike on their home in Gaza City.
The ministry released a list of names of 41 members of the Malka family it said were killed by the strike at dawn in the city’s Zeytoun district.
Fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian militants occurred in the neighbourhood in the morning, according to an AFP journalist
A separate strike on another building in Jabalia camp killed 32 people from the same family, 19 of them children, the Hamas official said.
The Israeli army did not specifically comment on the strikes but said its troops were expanding operations in Gaza, including in parts of Jabalia.
It comes as hundreds of people left Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital on foot, an AFP journalist at the scene saw, after the hospital director said the Israeli army ordered the hospital’s evacuation.
Non-government organisation Doctors Without Borders said a convoy carrying its staff and family members came under attack while evacuating from near Al-Shifa, despite co-ordinating with both sides. One person was killed.
Israeli forces denied ordering the evacuation of the hospital, saying it had “acceded to the request of the director” to allow more civilians to leave.
GLOBAL PEACE RALLIES AMID CALLS FOR CEASEFIRE
Thousands of protesters rallied across the US, Canada, France and Britain calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
Ministers from Arab and Islamic countries are expected to visit China as part of a new international effort to end the war in Gaza.
Saudi Foreign minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan took to social media to announce the tour.
“The first stop will be in China, then we will move to other capitals to convey a clear message that a ceasefire must be announced immediately, and let in aid,” he said.
“We have to work on ending this crisis and the war on Gaza as soon as possible.”
– with AFP
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Originally published as Israel-Hamas war: Footage shows ‘hostages taken to Gaza hospital’ as Israel admits their helicopter fired at festivalgoers
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