US Intel Confident Militant Groups Used Largest Gaza Hospital in Campaign against Israel: AP Source
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is “confident” that Palestinian militant groups used Gaza’s largest hospital to hold “at least a few” hostages seized during their bloody Oct. 7 attack and to house command infrastructure, an American intelligence assessment declassified Tuesday and shared by a U.S. official found.
The assessment offers the firmest U.S. support for Israeli claims about the Shifa hospital complex, which was raided by Israeli forces in November in an operation decried by global humanitarian organizations and some members of President Joe Biden’ s party. Yet the information released doesn’t fully back some of Israel’s most significant allegations that the hospital served as the central node for activities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The U.S. official shared the assessment on the condition of anonymity.
“The U.S. Intelligence Community is confident in its judgment on this topic and has independently corroborated information on HAMAS and PIJ’s use of the hospital complex for a variety of purposes related to its campaign against Israel,” the assessment states. It continues that it believes the groups “used the al-Shifa hospital complex and sites beneath it to house command infrastructure, exercise certain command and control activities, store some weapons, and hold at least a few hostages.”