The Palestinian Ministry of Health announced that Israeli forces opened fire inside the ward of the Ibn Sina Hospital in the city of Jenin. The Israeli military identified one of the Palestinians as a member of Hamas. The second Palestinian killed was a member of the Islamic Jihad, which was an ally of Hamas, and the third belonged to a group of militants based in Jenin, according to the statement of the Israeli army.
“They killed three men while they were sleeping in the room. They were executed in cold blood by firing bullets directly into their heads inside the room where they were being treated, Niji Nazzal, the hospital’s medical director, told Reuters. Hospital sources told Reuters that one of the men, Basel Ghazawi, was immobilized after being wounded by shrapnel during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in October and was in a wheelchair.
Palestinian Health Minister Mai Alkaila described the incident as a war crime.
The Israeli military said one of the men, Mohammed Jalamneh, was planning a terrorist attack in the “immediate future”. “For a long time, the wanted suspects hid in hospitals and used them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terrorist attacks,” the Israeli statement said. “This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organizations,” they said.
Disguised members of the Israeli army raided Ibn Sina Hospital
Hamas has confirmed that one of the three people killed by Israeli forces during an attack on the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank was a Hamas member. Islamic Jihad said the other two were their members.
Israel’s border police said three Palestinians were killed in an operation by a covert unit of the force. Surveillance footage circulating online showed a dozen disguised soldiers, including three in women’s clothing and two dressed as medical personnel, walking down a hospital corridor with rifles in hand.
Israel’s Minister of National Security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, reposted the video on social media, congratulated the forces that carried out the attack and added: “Let all our enemies know that our forces will act everywhere and by all means to protect our citizens and the State of Israel .”
In a statement, the Israeli military named the slain men as Mohammed Jalamneh, Mohammed Ghazawi and his brother Basel Ghazawi. They claim that Jalamneh was planning to carry out a terrorist attack in the near future and that he used the hospital as a hideout “and was therefore neutralized”. “Israeli security forces will continue to act against any threat to the safety of Israeli civilians. The wanted persons have been hiding in hospitals for a long time and use them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terrorist attacks, and they assume that the exploitation of hospitals will serve as protection against the counter-terrorist activities of the Israeli security forces. This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organizations,” they said.
Hamas said that Israel’s “crimes will not go unanswered” and that its fighters “will not be intimidated by the murders or weakened by the crimes of the cowardly enemy.”
Mai al-Kaila, the Palestinian Authority’s health minister, called on international bodies to prevent Israeli attacks on health facilities in Gaza and the occupied West Bank, and to ensure the protection of emergency teams, The Guardian writes.
