News/Commentary

IDF confirms strike, says Hamas terrorist cell used Gaza ambulance as transport — a war crime, if true

November 5, 2023 | | Print Article

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed on Friday that it struck an ambulance in Gaza that was being used on the battlefield to transport Hamas terrorists, a violation of the international rules of war, which otherwise protect medical transports.

“A Hamas terrorist cell was identified using an ambulance. In response, an IDF aircraft struck and neutralized the Hamas terrorists, who were operating within the ambulance,” the IDF said in a statement on X. “We emphasize that this area in Gaza is a war zone. Civilians are repeatedly called upon to evacuate southward for their own safety.”

According to BBC News, the Gaza health authority, which is run by Hamas, claimed “the ambulance was part of a convoy carrying wounded people from the besieged north to the south of the territory.”

The ambulance was reportedly outside Gaza’s main hospital when it was struck by Israeli aircraft, resulting in 13 deaths and 26 injured, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

(Video: YouTube)

But, according to the Daily Wire, Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital is “where Hamas has a vast underground command center, which is also a war crime.”

“Footage posted online showed that Hamas was gathering large crowds of people at the hospital — thus using them as human shields, which is a war crime — to watch its terrorists murder Israeli soldiers in northern Gaza,” the outlet reports.

The International Committee of the Red Cross [ICRC] is “based on the Geneva Conventions of 1949, their Additional Protocols, its Statutes – and those of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement – and the resolutions of the International Conferences of the Red Cross and Red Crescent,” according to its website.

It keeps the ICRC’s International Humanitarian Law Databases.

“According to State practice, the transport of healthy troops, arms or munitions and the collection or transmission of military intelligence are examples of uses of medical transports leading to loss of protection,” it explains. “Hence, medical aircraft should not carry any equipment intended for the collection or transmission of intelligence.”

“It’s been public knowledge for YEARS that Hamas uses ambulances to get around Gaza — just like it’s been public knowledge that its main HQ is located underneath Shifa Hospital,” the Israel War Room stated on X. “This clip, from Israel’s 2014 war against Hamas, shows two terrorists using an ambulance to flee a gunfight with the IDF (the IDF did not target the ambulance that day).”

The thread continued: “Another video from the 2014 war against Hamas shows the IDF calling off a strike as Hamas terrorists boarded an ambulance. In 2014, Hamas often used ambulances filled with civilians, including children, to move around Gaza, to deter the IDF from striking.”

“During the 2009 Gaza war, Hamas tried to hijack ambulances or force ambulance drivers to transport them around the Strip,” the Israel War Room added. “In 2002, Palestinian terrorists used ambulances to smuggle bombs into Israel to attack Israeli civilians, including aboard ambulances transporting sick children. One ambulance driver confessed that Red Crescent workers were sent on terror missions.”

In an article published on Saturday, the Times of Israel cited a “senior Biden administration official” and reported that “Hamas tried to sneak its fighters out of the Gaza Strip in ambulances that evacuated dozens of wounded Palestinians to Egypt earlier this week.”

“Hamas had compiled a list of the seriously wounded that it wanted to evacuate from Gaza for treatment in Egypt, along with thousands of foreign nationals looking to flee the enclave,” according to the outlet.”The list was then vetted by Egypt and the United States, which found that a third of the names on it were of Hamas fighters, the administration official said, adding that the list was rejected and none of the 76 wounded Palestinians who were ultimately evacuated in ambulances out of Gaza were members of the terror group.”

Two senior Israeli officials told the Times of Israel that Israeli inspectors found earlier this week “several oxygen concentrators meant to aerate the tunnels operated by terror organizations in Gaza” concealed in an aid truck.

“These weren’t for use in the hospitals, but below them,” one of the officials said. “That’s why they were smuggled among boxes of cookies.”

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Melissa Fine
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