Israel says its troops have discovered Hamas tunnel and car with weapons at Gaza’s biggest hospital

Israel’s military has announced its troops have found a tunnel shaft and a vehicle with weapons at Gaza’s biggest hospital.

Israel believes a vast underground Hamas command headquarters was operating in tunnels at the al-Shifa hospital.

Today the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it made the discovery hospital and released videos and photographs which show the weapons, which include rifles and the tunnel.

The Israeli military also announced it had found the body of an Israeli Hamas hostage from a building near the hospital during its search of the complex.

It comes after Israel yesterday shared photograps of a hoard of weapons including automatic rifles and grenades which it claims to have discovered during raids at the hospital after it entered its grounds.

In a statement the IDF said: “In the al-Shifa Hospital, IDF troops found an operational tunnel shaft and a vehicle containing a large number of weapons.”

The IDF also said the body of an Israeli woman, one of around 240 hostages taken by Hamas gunmen when they stormed into southern Israel on 7 October was recovered by troops in a building near the hospital.

Military equipment including Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades were also found in the building, it said.

Yehudit Weiss, a 65-year-old woman, was abducted from the Be’eri kibbutz during Hamas’ attack on southern Israel last month. She had been undergoing cancer treatment.

Yesterday the prime minister’s spokesman, Ofir Gendlemen, posted photos on social media showing automatic rifles and grenades that he said were found at then hospital.

In a video said to be filmed at al-Shifa, Israel Defence Force (IDF) spokesperson Jonathan Conricus displayed similar weapons and claimed that the findings “confirm without any doubt that Hamas systematically uses hospitals in their military operations in violation of international law”.

Palestinian medics also claimed today that they are increasingly afraid for the lives of hundreds of patients and medical staff at the hospital, which has cut off from all links to the outside world for more than a day after Israeli forces entered.

Israel said its commandos were still searching through Al Shifa hospital.

Human Rights Watch cautioned that hospitals have special protections under international humanitarian law.

“Hospitals only lose those protections if it can be shown that harmful acts have been carried out from the premises,” the watchdog’s U.N. Director Louis Charbonneau told Reuters.

The director of Al Shifa Complex, Muhammad Abu Salamiya, said the hospital had been “under occupation authority for 48 hours and every minute that passes” more patients will die.

“We are waiting for slow death,” he told Al Jazeera TV.

Gaza’s health ministry said Israeli soldiers had removed bodies from the hospital grounds and destroyed cars parked there, but they were not letting staff or patients leave.

Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qidra said there was no water, food or baby milk in Shifa, which was packed with 650 patients and about 7,000 people displaced by weeks of Israeli air strikes and artillery bombardments.

He demanded that the Israeli troops leave.

Medics have previously said dozens of patients including three premature babies had died from of a lack of fuel and basic supplies during a days-long siege.

Elsewhere, Israel ordered civilians to leave four towns in the southern part of the Gaza Strip on Thursday, raising fears war could spread to areas where it had told people they would be safe.

Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said in a statement Israeli forces had cleared the entire west part of Gaza City and that the “next stage has begun”. The Israeli military’s chief of staff said Israel was close to destroying Hamas’s military system in the northern Gaza Strip.

“We will complete it,” said Lieutenant-General Herzi Halevi.

Additional reporting by Reuters.