The Israeli military raided Gaza’s largest hospital early Wednesday, conducting what it called a “precise and targeted” operation against Hamas as Israel seized broader control of northern Gaza, including capturing the territory’s legislature building and its police headquarters.

The gains carried high symbolic value in the country’s quest to crush the terrorist group that rules Gaza.

The raid unfolded “in a specified area” of the Shifa Hospital, which has been the site of a standoff with Hamas. Israeli authorities say Hamas conceals military operations in the facility. But with hundreds of patients and medical personnel inside, the military had refrained from entering.

In recent weeks, Israeli defense forces have publicly warned that such use of the hospital jeopardized its protection under international law. On Tuesday, military officials conveyed again to Gaza authorities that all military activity in the hospital must cease within 12 hours.

“Unfortunately, it did not,” the military said.

Israeli military officials gave no further details on the raid but said they were taking steps to avoid harm to civilians.

Meanwhile, Israeli defense officials said they have agreed to allow some fuel shipments into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian purposes. It was the first time Israel has allowed fuel into the besieged territory since Hamas’ bloody cross-border invasion on Oct. 7.

Inside some of the newly captured buildings, soldiers held up the Israeli flag and military flags in celebration. In a nationally televised news conference, Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Hamas had “lost control” of northern Gaza and that Israel made significant gains in Gaza City.

But asked about the time frame for the war, Gallant said: “We’re talking about long months, not a day or two.”

One Israeli commander in Gaza, identified only as Lt. Col. Gilad, said in a video that his forces near Shifa Hospital had seized government buildings, schools and residential buildings where they found weapons and eliminated fighters.

The army said it captured the legislature, the Hamas police headquarters and a compound housing Hamas’ military intelligence headquarters. The buildings are powerful symbols, but their strategic value was unclear. Hamas fighters are believed to be in underground bunkers.

Elsewhere, the Palestinian Red Crescent said Tuesday it had evacuated patients, doctors and displaced families from another Gaza City hospital, Al-Quds.

Israel has vowed to end Hamas rule in Gaza after the Oct. 7 attack into Israel in which they killed some 1,200 people and took roughly 240 hostages. The Israeli government has acknowledged it doesn’t know what it will do with the territory after Hamas’ defeat.

Israeli defense officials, who repeatedly rejected allowing fuel into Gaza saying Hamas would divert it for military use, changed course early Wednesday. Israel will allow some 24,000 liters (6,340 gallons) of fuel into the Gaza Strip for humanitarian operations, officials said.

The Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, the Israeli defense body responsible for Palestinian affairs, said it would allow U.N. trucks to refill at the Rafah crossing on the Egyptian border later Wednesday. It said the decision was in response to a request from the U.S.

The White House’s national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, said the U.S. has unspecified intelligence that Hamas and another Palestinian militants use Shifa and other hospitals and tunnels underneath them to support military operations and hold hostages.

The intelligence is based on multiple sources, and the U.S. independently collected the information, a U.S. official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

Kirby said the U.S. doesn’t support airstrikes on hospitals and does not want to see “a firefight in a hospital where innocent people” are trying to get care.

MARCH FOR HOSTAGES

Families and supporters of the around 240 people being held hostage by Hamas started a protest march from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The plight of the hostages has dominated public discourse since the Oct. 7 attack, with solidarity protests held across the country. The marchers, who expect to reach Jerusalem on Saturday, say the government must do more to bring home their loved-ones.

“Where are you?” Shelly Shem Tov, whose 21-year-old son, Omer, is among the captives, called out to Netanyahu. “We have no strength anymore. We have no strength. Bring back our children and our families home.”

BATTLE IN GAZA CITY

Independent accounts of the fighting in Gaza City have been nearly impossible to gather, as communications to the north have largely collapsed.

Israeli military spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israeli forces have completed the takeover of Shati refugee camp, a densely built district bordering Gaza City’s center, and are moving about freely in the city as a whole.

Videos released by the Israeli military show troops moving through the city, firing into buildings. Bulldozers push down structures as tanks roll through streets surrounded by partially collapsed towers.

The videos portray a battle where troops are rooting out pockets of Hamas fighters and tearing down buildings where they find them, while gradually dismantling the group’s tunnel network.

Israel says it has killed several thousand fighters, including important mid-level commanders, while 46 of its own soldiers have been killed in Gaza.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)