‘Operation Al-Aqsa Flood’ Day 116: Israeli forces carry out assassination raid inside Jenin hospital disguised as doctors

Casualties

• 26,751+ killed* and at least 65,636 wounded in the Gaza Strip.
• 387+ Palestinians killed in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem
• Israel revises its estimated October 7 death toll down from 1,400 to 1,147.
• 557 Israeli soldiers killed since October 7, and at least 3,221 injured.**

*This figure was confirmed by Gaza’s Ministry of Health. Some rights groups put the death toll number at more than 33,000 when accounting for those presumed dead.

** This figure is released by the Israeli military.

Key Developments

• Israeli force of ten soldiers storm Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin and kill three Palestinians with silenced pistols.
• Israeli forces siege Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, bar entry and exit to Palestinians.
• Dr. Asharf al-Qudra says Israeli forces are besieging Nasser Hospital for a second consecutive week, trapping 150 medical staff, 450 injured, and 3,000 displaced Palestinians.
• The Palestine Red Crescent Society loses communication with team sent to rescue 6-year-old girl in Gaza.
• Israeli forces push Palestinians sheltering in Al-Shifa’ Hospital to eastern areas as it bombs southern and western Gaza City.
• Israel bombs house of Madoukh family in the Al-Sabra neighborhood in Gaza City, killing at least 20 people. It also bombs Rafah’s El-Geneina neighborhood, Nuseirat camp, Batn al-Sameen area, and Al-Amal neighborhood in Khan Younis.
• Israeli protest attempts to block aid trucks entering into Gaza Strip from the Kerem Abu Salem crossing.
• Israeli “Order 9” movement calls on government to bar entry to humanitarian aid into Gaza as long as Hamas holds Israeli captives.
• UN warns, “If the funding is not resumed, UNRWA will not be able to continue its services and operations across the region, including in Gaza, beyond the end of February.”
• According to a potential deal between Israel and Hamas, there will be 45-day pause of fighting, during which Hamas will release 35 Israeli captives in return for 4,000 Palestinian prisoners.
• Hamas launches barrage of rockets on Tel Aviv on Monday from Khan Younis and published footage of targeting Israeli tanks with 105mm Al-Yaseen anti-tank shells.

Israeli forces kill three Palestinians in Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin

In the past 24 hours, Israeli forces have targeted hospitals in the Gaza Strip and the occupied West Bank, killing and injuring several Palestinians.

On Tuesday morning, an Israeli force of ten soldiers stormed the Ibn Sina Hospital in Jenin town, killing three Palestinians with silenced pistols.

The Israeli unit was disguised as doctors, nurses, and civilians. Footageof the moment they stormed Ibn Sina shows shocked medical staff and patients who were threatened at gunpoint.

Palestinian resistance fighters clashed with the Israeli forces, which stormed Jenin and its refugee camp overnight.

Israel has killed more than 380 Palestinians in the West Bank and occupied Jerusalem since October; 62 of them since January. 

The Palestinian Authority’s (PA) Minister of Health, Dr. Mai al-Kaila, condemned the Israeli attack.

“This crime comes after dozens of crimes committed by the [Israeli] occupation forces against health centers and staff… International law provides general and specific protection for civilian sites, including hospitals,” said al-Kaila.

The three Palestinians killed in the Ibn Sina Hospital were identified as the brothers Muhammad and Basil Ayman Al-Ghazawi, and Muhammad Walid Jalamna, according to Wafa news agency.

Basel has been injured during a previous Israeli raid of Jenin and has been in the Ibn Sina since October 25, Wafa reported. Israel said the Palestinians in the hospital were a “Hamas unit.”

In the last 48 hours  Israeli forces have killed at least nine Palestinians in the West Bank (more below).

Israel puts Nasser Hospital under siege for a second week

In the Gaza Strip, Israeli forces has put the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis under a brutal siege, barring entry and exit to the facility, which has forced Palestinian families to bury their relatives in the hospital’s yards.

The Nasser Hospital is the biggest and most vital health facility in south Gaza and has the highest number of beds, doctors, and operation rooms. It offers medical services to Palestinians as far as Rafah, the most southern town in Gaza.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health spokesperson Dr. Asharf al-Qudra said on Tuesday that Israeli forces are besieging the hospital for the second consecutive week.

Currently, there are 150 medical staff, 450 injured patients, and 3,000 displaced Palestinians trapped in the facility, and they are at risk of Israeli fire if they attempt to leave.

“Electrical generators at Nasser Medical Complex will stop within two days due to fuel shortages,” Dr. al-Qudra said in a statement on Telegram.

“Waste accumulates in the sections and courtyards of the Nasser Medical Complex, and the occupation refuses to allow it to be transported out,” he added.

The ministry said that Israeli forces killed 114 Palestinians and injured 249 others in 13 massacres in Gaza in the past 24 hours. 

“A number of victims are still under rubble and on the roads. The occupation prevents ambulance and civil defense crews from reaching them,” it added.

The number of Palestinians killed in the Israeli aggression on Gaza now stands at 26,751 martyrs, and 65,636 were injured since October.

Red Crescent loses communication with team rescuing girl in Gaza

One of those victims is Hind, a 6-year-old girl, who found herself surrounded by Israeli tanks in Gaza City.

The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) said that it lost communication with a team dispatched to rescue Hind, who was inside a vehicle.

“We remain unaware of their fate and whether they succeeded in evacuating her or not,” PRCS said. 

Israeli forces had targeted Hind’s family, killing her father, mother, and four brothers. The girl was trapped inside a car in a designated military zone in Gaza.

Israeli forces placed the Al-Shifa’ Hospital under siege again in north Gaza. Al-Shifa’ dominated the headlines when Israel stormed it in November in search of a purported Hamas command center underneath it, which proved to not exist.

On Monday, Israeli forces pushed Palestinians sheltering in the Al-Shifaa to areas east of Gaza City as it bombed southern and western Gaza.

A Palestinian woman, who was sheltering in Al-Rimal school near the Al-Shifa, told Al-Jazeera Arabic that Israeli tanks kept approaching until it stopped at the gates of the school.

“We fled. We were scared and terrorized. I can’t remember how we escaped. We walked all the way, pushed by fear. My daughter is injured. The tanks were at the school gates for an hour,” she said.

“We left while it was dark, tumbling over each other. We walked over the bodies of martyrs in the dark. There were 13 of them,” she said.

In Rafah, thousands of Palestinians have been living under heavy rain, lacking drinking water and food. Some could not find a tent, which a used one could cost around $1,000 USD on the open market.

The desperate situation pushed some families to rent warehouses, a corridor in residential buildings, or even a barn in Rafah.

Al-Akhbar newspaper’s correspondent, Youssef Faris, spoke to a family who rented a barn to shelter from the rain after it lost its home in an Israeli attack.

“The owners agreed to rent [the barn] to us for $600 a month. We worked hard for a week to clean it, and now we live in it,” he reported.

Israel had turned the Gaza Strip into a hell on earth, with nearly two million Palestinians currently displaced and thousands buried under the rubble.

Israel also kept bombing Gaza, killing hundreds of Palestinians each day, despite its announcement early in January that it was moving to a “less intense stage” of military operations.

On Monday evening, the Israeli military bombed the house of the Madoukh family in the Al-Sabra neighborhood in Gaza City, killing at least 20 people. It also bombed Rafah’s El-Geneina neighborhood, Nuseirat camp, Batn al-Sameen area, and the Al-Amal neighborhood in Khan Younis.

Israeli activists attempt to block aid trucks entering Gaza

For the seventh consecutive day, an Israeli protest organized by the Order 9 movement, attempted to block aid trucks entering into the Gaza Strip from the Kerem Abu Salem crossing.

The Order 9 movement, whose slogan is “The Victory Depends on You!” in Hebrew, is calling for the Israeli government to bar entry to humanitarian aid into Gaza as long as Israeli captives are held by Hamas.

Skirmishes between the activists and Israeli military police took place over the past two days.

An Israeli reserve soldier was arrested at the Kerem Abu Salem crossing along with 13 others on Monday. Minister of Defence, Yoav Gallant, was faced with a protest by reserve soldiers who called him to block aid going into Gaza.

Gaza is already under a severe shortage of medical, food, water, and fuel supplies. A number of states, including the U.S., had suspended its donations to the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) after Israel claimed that 12 UNRWA employees were involved in the Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7.

UNRWA said that it sacked nine of the employees, and the tenth is still being identified. The remaining two were killed in the October attack. UNRWA employs 30,000 workers, 13,000 of them are in the Gaza Strip, and the rest are in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and the West Bank.

The agency warned that “If the funding is not resumed, UNRWA will not be able to continue its services and operations across the region, including in Gaza, beyond the end of February.”

Potential Hamas-Israel deal for 45-day truce and captive exchange

On Tuesday, Hamas political chief, Ismail Haniyeh said the movement received a proposal following Paris talks over the weekend, mediated by Qatar, Egypt, and the CIA, to reach a truce and captive exchange deal.

Haniyeh said that Hamas is studying the proposal, and its priority remains “to stop the brutal aggression against Gaza and the complete withdrawal of the [Israeli] occupation forces from the [Gaza] Strip.”

According to the potential deal, a 45-day pause of fighting will be announced by Israel and Palestinian resistance movements, during which Hamas will release 35 Israeli captives in return for 4,000 Palestinian prisoners. If successful, the deal will be the biggest since 1985, when Israel released more than 1,150 Palestinian and some Arab national prisoners in exchange for three Israeli soldiers captured in Lebanon.

Hamas launched a barrage of rockets on Tel Aviv on Monday from the area of Khan Younis, where Israeli tanks and forces are launching bombardment and military strikes.

Hamas’s armed wing, the Izz El-Din Al-Qassam Brigades, also published footage of its forces targeting Israeli tanks with 105mm Al-Yaseen anti-tank shells.

Israeli forces raid West Bank towns and kill nine Palestinians in 48 hours

Israeli forces raided more than a dozen Palestinian towns and villages in the occupied West Bank, and killed at least nine people in less than 48 hours.

The Palestinian Prisoners Club said Israel arrested 18 Palestinians overnight, bringing the number of arrest cases to 6,390 since last October 7, some of them were later released.

Israeli forces killed five Palestinians on Monday. Obaida Hassan Abdel Rahman Hamed, 18, was shot dead in Silwad village, east of Ramallah, during an Israeli raid.

In Nablus, an Israeli force shot at a Palestinian vehicle driving on a road between Aqraba and Osrin villages. The two brothers escaped death; however, bullets damaged their car windscreen and body, Wafa reported.

Overnight, Israeli forces raided the Palestinian towns of Sinjil, Tulkarm, Noor Shams refugee camp, Nahalin near Bethlehem, Al-Aroub refugee camp, Oum Safa, Jenin, Bani Naim near Hebron, Nablus, Silwan in Jerusalem, Qalandia, Kisan, Qabatia, Al-Samou and Qalqilya.