Undercover Israeli forces raid West Bank hospital, seize alleged militant from ICU
By Kareem Khadder, Abeer Salman, Mick Krever and Dana Karni, CNN
(CNN) — Israeli forces dressed in civilian clothes raided a hospital in the northern occupied West Bank on Wednesday night and detained an alleged Palestinian militant who had days earlier been injured in an Israeli airstrike that killed two Hamas members.
“Around 20 undercover Israeli special forces – wearing doctors’, nurses’, and even female Palestinians’ outfits – stormed the hospital,” a hospital official, who asked to remain anonymous because they are not authorized to speak with the media, told CNN. “The entire process took less than six minutes – storming, kidnapping and departure.”
Video from bystanders shows Israeli forces, one of whom wore a white medical coat, wheeling the suspect out of the Nablus hospital in a wheelchair and into an unmarked van.
In a statement, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said that following an “elimination attempt” of the alleged militant, “security forces precisely operated and apprehended him today” at a hospital in Nablus.
The military said the alleged militant, Ayman Ghanam, took part in an August shooting attack near an Israeli settlement in the northern West Bank, which killed one Israeli civilian and injured another.
The International Committee of the Red Cross says that international law bars perfidy, which includes “feigning civilian or non-combatant status” to kill, injure or capture an adversary.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health called the raid “a flagrant violation of all international laws and conventions that stipulate the protection of treatment centers and patients.” The IDF said the operation was planned to “mitigate harm to patients and the medical staff of the hospital.”
In January, Israeli special forces, dressed as civilians and medical staff, infiltrated the Ibn Sina hospital in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin on Tuesday and killed three Palestinian men.
Ghanam was injured in an Israeli airstrike on a car near the town of Aqaba in the northern West Bank on Tuesday, which the IDF said targeted “a terrorist cell planning an imminent terror attack.”
In the hours after that strike, Israeli forces raided a hospital in Tubas city, handcuffing medical staff and arresting several people, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health and videos taken by bystanders. The IDF said soldiers “did not enter the hospital.”
Hamas’ military wing, the Qassam Brigades, said in a statement that Tuesday’s strike killed two of its members “following a treacherous Zionist bombardment that they were subjected” to while carrying out a mission with other fighters near Aqaba.
The hospital official told CNN that Ghanam, who had been “seriously injured,” was in the ICU at the time of the Israeli raid and had undergone surgeries to treat abdominal and leg injuries.
The IDF said that “security forces will continue to operate wherever necessary to thwart terrorism in the area and to maintain the safety of Israeli civilians.”
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