The US is “confident” that Palestinian militant groups used Gaza’s largest hospital to hold “at least a few” hostages seized during their bloody October 7 attack and to house command infrastructure, according to an American intelligence assessment declassified on Tuesday and shared by a US official.
The assessment offers the firmest US support for Israeli claims about the al-Shifa hospital complex in Gaza City, which was raided by Israeli forces in November in an operation decried by global humanitarian organisations and some members of President Joe Biden’s party.
Yet the information released does not fully back up some of Israel’s most significant allegations that the hospital served as the central node for activities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The assessment states: “The US intelligence community is confident in its judgment on this topic and has independently corroborated information on Hamas and PIJ’s use of the hospital complex for a variety of purposes related to its campaign against Israel.”
It continues that it believes the groups “used the al-Shifa hospital complex and sites beneath it to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command and control activities, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages.”
The US believes Hamas members evacuated the complex days before Israel raided it on November 15 and that they destroyed sensitive documents and electronics before Israeli troops entered the facility.
US officials had previously pointed to classified intelligence, obtained independently from the Israelis, to offer support for Israel’s raid.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters a day before Israel entered the hospital: “I can confirm for you that we have information that Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad use some hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including al-Shifa, and tunnels underneath them to conceal and to support their military operations and to hold hostages.”
Gaza’s hospitals have played a central role in the duelling narratives surrounding the war that the Hamas-run Health Ministry says has killed 22,100 people – though it does not differentiate between civilians and combatants.
Hospitals enjoy special protected status under the international laws of war. But they can lose that status if they are used for military purposes.
Before the raid on the hospital, the Israeli military unveiled a detailed 3D model of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital showing a series of underground installations that it said was part of an elaborate Hamas command-and-control centre underneath the territory’s largest healthcare facility.
The Israeli military has yet to unveil any infrastructure nearly as sprawling and developed as the purported centre.
