Body of elderly hostage found near Gaza hospital

The Israeli military recovered the body of an Israeli hostage from a building next to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City as soldiers continued to search the hospital complex after an early morning raid on Wednesday.

According to The Guardian, 65-year-old Yehudit Weiss was kidnapped from Kibbutz Beeri by Hamas militants during their attack on southern Israel on October 7, which left at least 1,200 people killed and more than 240 taken hostage. The woman was undergoing treatment for cancer.

“The body of Yehudit Weiss, abducted by the Hamas terrorist organization, was recovered by IDF soldiers from a building adjacent to Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip and transported to Israeli territory,” an IDF spokesman said late Thursday.

“Military equipment was also found in the building where Yehudit was located, including Kalashnikovs and RPGs,” the spokesman added.

Weiss’s husband, Shmulik, was killed in a Hamas attack, The Guardian reports.

The Israel Defense Forces also said it had discovered a Hamas tunnel shaft and a vehicle containing weapons at the Dar al-Shifa hospital complex.

Israel dropped leaflets in southern Gaza urging Palestinian civilians to leave four towns on the eastern edge of Khan Younis, raising fears that its offensive would spread south. Residents of Bani Shuhail, Khuzaa, Abassan and al-Qarara were told that anyone near the militants or their positions was “putting their lives in danger.”

Israel’s army chief said the military was close to destroying what he called the military system that existed in northern Gaza, a day after the IDF entered the Shifa hospital complex.

US President Joe Biden, speaking late on Wednesday, defended his refusal to call for a ceasefire in Gaza, arguing that Hamas poses an ongoing threat to Israel and that Israeli forces are seeking to avoid civilian casualties.

The American leader said Israeli forces had shifted from aerial bombardment, which he appeared to acknowledge was indiscriminate in piecemeal fashion, to more targeted ground operations after more than 11,000 Palestinians were reported killed. “This is not carpet bombing. This is a completely different matter. They are walking through these tunnels, they are heading to the hospital,” he said after talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

An IDF spokesman said Thursday that troops were still inside the hospital complex, searching one building after another in a “discrete, methodical and thorough manner.”

The official said the IDF found weapons, intelligence materials, military technology and equipment, command and control centers and communications equipment belonging to Hamas. They added that information and videos about hostages kidnapped from Israel were found on computers and other technological equipment.

On Wednesday, Hamas described Israeli claims that military equipment had been found as “nothing more than a continuation of lies and cheap propaganda through which [Израиль] is trying to justify his crime of destroying the health sector in Gaza.”

The Hamas-run Health Ministry said IDF troops were searching the underground levels of Shifa Hospital and detaining technicians responsible for operating its equipment.

Tens of thousands of people have fled from north to south Gaza in recent weeks, crowding into U.N.-run shelters and family homes in Khan Yunis, the south’s largest city, amid the offensive.

UN human rights chief Volker Türk said that five weeks into the war, “massive outbreaks of infectious disease and famine” seemed inevitable in the densely populated Palestinian territory. He predicted catastrophic consequences if fuel supplies ran out, including the destruction of sanitation and health systems and the disruption of already meager humanitarian aid supplies.

The head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees, Philippe Lazzarini, said he feared for civil order in Gaza after a new communications blackout occurred there on Thursday. He added that he believed there was a deliberate attempt to “stifle” the agency’s humanitarian work in Gaza, warning that it may have to suspend operations entirely due to fuel shortages.

The director of the Shifa hospital, Muhammad Abu Salmiya, told the BBC that the hospital had 650 patients and about 5,000 displaced people, and that it had run out of oxygen and water. “The conditions are tragic and those in the hospital are screaming with thirst,” he said. Mounir al-Bursh, a senior hospital official, said troops searched the basement and other buildings and questioned and checked the faces of patients, staff and people sheltering at the facility, the Associated Press reported.

Hundreds of patients at Shifa Hospital, including newborn babies, suffered for days without electricity and other basic necessities. The hospital has become a strategic target for Israel, which claims that the bunkers below it house a Hamas command center, which Hamas and hospital staff deny, The Guardian notes.

The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli tanks had laid siege to Al Ahli hospital in Gaza and that a “violent attack” was underway. “Teams cannot move and reach those who are injured,” the organization said.

On Thursday morning, the Israel Defense Forces said Israeli fighter jets struck the home of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Gaza. In a social media post that included video purporting to show the strike, the IDF said the house “was used as terrorist infrastructure and a meeting place for senior Hamas leaders to direct terrorist attacks against Israel.”

Two-thirds of Gaza’s 2.3 million people have been left homeless by the war, and all available accommodation in Khan Yunis and other southern cities is overcrowded.

More than 11,200 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 people are still missing, with most believed to be buried under the rubble.

The Israeli army on Thursday announced the deaths of two more soldiers in Gaza, raising the number of troops killed in the territory to 50 since the war began.