Who hit the ambulances near the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza – Agence France-Presse
Middle East
The charity that runs the hospital: the Israeli army’s accusations are a pretext to justify attacks against us, and therefore we must refute them
Indonesia on Tuesday denied claims by an Israeli army spokesman that a hospital in Gaza, built with Indonesian funding, had Hamas tunnels beneath it and was adjacent to a platform for launching rocket attacks.
The hospital, located in the northern Gaza Strip near the fortified border with Israel, was built with funds from Indonesian charitable donations.
“The Indonesian Hospital in Gaza is a facility built entirely by the Indonesian people for humanitarian purposes and to meet the medical needs of the Palestinian people in Gaza,” the Indonesian Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
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The statement came a day after Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari announced that the hospital was built on a site concealing a Hamas tunnel network.
He added that Hamas is using a nearby site as a base to fire rockets at Israel.
He said in a video recording posted by the Israeli army on YouTube: “I will show you why they built the hospital there. It is not surprising that Hamas built the hospital on its terrorist infrastructure.”
He added: “Here, the IDF has identified a launch pad, which means they are launching missiles from there,” and pointed to what he said was photographic evidence of this.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Iqbal Muhammad rejected claims about the hospital, which, like other Gaza medical centers destroyed by bombing, is currently treating patients beyond its capacity.
The charity that runs the hospital (MER-C) denied that the hospital was being used by Hamas.
The association’s president, Srabini Abdul Murad, said in Jakarta on Monday: “What Israel accuses us of could be a pretext to launch an attack on the Indonesian hospital in Gaza.”
Murad added: “The IDF’s accusations are a pretext to justify attacks against us. So we must refute them.”
Hamas consistently denies Israeli accusations that its members used hospitals and other civilian infrastructure.
Israel has been intensively shelling the besieged Gaza Strip for a month in response to Hamas’s unprecedented attack in Israel on October 7, which killed 1,400 people, according to Israeli officials.
Since the start of Israeli bombing, 10,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 4,000 children, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.