Israel-Hamas War News: Israeli Forces Raid Nasser Hospital in Gaza - The New York Times

Middle East Crisis Israeli Forces Raid Hospital Complex in Southern Gaza

Updated 

Feb. 15, 2024, 11:01 a.m. ET28 minutes ago

1. 

   "Israeli strikes hitting Khan Younis, which is just north of Rafah.

   Said Khatib/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

2. Palestinian patients arriving in Rafah after evacuating from Nasser hospital.

   Mohammed Salem/Reuters

3. Palestinians crowding outside a bakery in Rafah.

   Mohammed Abed/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

4. Displaced Palestinians evacuating from Rafah, Gaza.

   Haitham Imad/EPA, via Shutterstock

5. Palestinians praying in a damaged mosque in Rafah.

   Fatima Shbair/Associated Press

6. Israeli military vehicles inside the Gaza Strip.

   Jack Guez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

7. A building damaged by Israeli strikes in the southern Lebanese city of Nabatieh.

   Aziz Taher/Reuters

8. An Israeli police officer in Safed inspecting a crater left by a rocket fired from Lebanon. 

   Jalaa Marey/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

9. Posters in Tel Aviv aims to keep the Israeli hostages being held in Gaza in the public eye. 

   Ahmad Gharabli/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

10. Palestinian children marching in Rafah to demand an end to the war.

    Ahmad Hasaballah/Getty Images

Here’s what we know:

The Israeli military said it was conducting a “limited” operation inside the Nasser Medical Complex, where many Palestinians have sought shelter.

• Israel says it sent special forces into the largest hospital in southern Gaza.
• Weeks before the Israeli raid, a doctor described the crisis at Nasser hospital.
• Lebanese state media says Israeli strikes there killed 10 civilians.
• The U.S. says it seized more weapons from Iran intended for the Houthis.
• Hostages’ families denounce reports that Israel has pulled out of Gaza cease-fire talks.
• Gazans who sought shelter in Rafah are fleeing again.

Israel sent troops into Nasser Medical Complex on Thursday in what it said was a search for Hamas fighters and the bodies of hostages, an incursion that raised alarm over the fate of hundreds of patients and medical workers and the many displaced Palestinians who had sought shelter there from the war.

The raid came two days after Israel’s military ordered displaced people to evacuate the hospital, the largest in southern Gaza and one of the last ones functioning in the enclave, and after warnings by health officials that a military operation there could be catastrophic for civilians.

Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi, a surgeon who has worked at Nasser Medical Complex for three years, said that the “pressure is very big” at the hospital as Israeli forces surrounded Khan Younis, Gaza.Dr. Ahmed Moghrabi/Instagram

The Israeli military operation at Nasser Medical Complex on Thursday followed weeks of warnings from health officials about increasingly dire conditions inside the hospital. Doctors struggling with scarce supplies. Displaced people sleeping in corridors. Hunger gnawing as food grew scarce. Bombings and gunfire reverberating in the surrounding streets.

In a series of social media posts in late January, Ahmed Moghrabi, a surgeon at the hospital, described “two days of horror” as Israeli forces edged closer. Over two days, he said, the hospital, with just a dozen surgeons left, received more than 320 patients.

— Nailah Morgan and Arijeta Lajka

Maps: Tracking the Attacks in Israel and Gaza

See where Israel has bulldozed vast areas of Gaza, as its invasion continues to advance south.

Israel’s military launched new attacks on targets in Lebanon on Thursday, a day after its strikes in southern Lebanon killed at least 10 civilians, the most in months of cross-border fighting.

The strikes — which came in response to a rocket attack from Lebanon on Wednesday that killed one Israeli soldier and wounded eight other people — amplified fears that months of cross-border clashes could escalate into a full-fledged war.

Israel’s military said its raid of Nasser Medical Complex in Gaza on Thursday was partly driven by intelligence showing that Hamas had held hostages there and that the bodies of captives could be at the hospital.

The operation came amid an increasingly divisive public debate in Israel over the government’s course of action in Gaza regarding the hostages captured by Hamas and other groups on Oct. 7. More than 130 hostages remain in the enclave, including at least 30 who are believed to have died, according to the Israeli security services.

The U.S. military said on Thursday that a Coast Guard cutter had recently seized advanced weapons and other lethal aid from a vessel in the Arabian Sea that had originated in Iran and were bound for Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.

A Coast Guard boarding team intercepted the vessel on Jan. 28 and found more than 200 packages that contained medium-range ballistic missile components, explosives, naval drone components, anti-tank guided missile launcher parts and communications gear, the military’s Central Command said in a statement.

As talks continued in Cairo toward an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, Israeli media reported on Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had told his negotiators not to take part, infuriating some family members of hostages still in Gaza who say that the government is not doing enough to rescue their relatives.

Mr. Netanyahu’s office did not directly confirm or deny the reports, instead issuing a statement saying that Hamas had not made any new proposal, but that “a change in Hamas’s position will allow progress in the negotiations.”

With Israel signaling an invasion of the southern Gazan city of Rafah, Palestinians who fled there are uncertain about where to go next. Some are returning to the places they earlier had to evacuate.Mohammed Saber/EPA, via Shutterstock

The city of Rafah in southern Gaza is one of the last areas of the territory where Israeli troops have yet to deploy in force. But now, as Israel warns of a ground offensive there, some of the 1.4 million people who have been sheltering in the city are packing up and moving on.

— Nader Ibrahim, Shawn Paik and Rawan Sheikh Ahmad

Christopher A. Wray, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, made an unannounced trip to Israel on Wednesday to meet with officials from the country’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies, the F.B.I. said.

As part of the visit, his first to Israel since the Hamas-led terrorist attacks of Oct. 7, Mr. Wray also spoke with F.B.I. agents working in Israel, the bureau said in a statement on Wednesday, stressing the importance of their efforts to counter threats from Hezbollah and Hamas. The United States designates both as terrorist groups.

Relatives of hostages being held in Gaza flew from Israel to The Hague on Wednesday on an emotional trip designed to draw attention to a complaint filed a day earlier against the leaders of Hamas at the International Criminal Court, accusing them of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes, including hostage-taking, killings and acts of sexual violence. 

The hostage families, numbering about 100 people and accompanied by two former hostages who were released in November, said they had come to try to make sure that justice would be done. The case is being led by the legal team of the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, an Israeli nongovernmental organization advocating for the release of the captives, and the Canada-based Raoul Wallenberg Center for Human Rights."

Israel-Hamas War News: Israeli Forces Raid Nasser Hospital in Gaza - The New York Times