A group of armed Israeli forces disguised as women and medical workers killed three Palestinian terrorists inside a hospital in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday.
The Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said it "neutralized" a Hamas terrorist cell that was hiding inside the Ibn Sina Hospital in the city of Jenin in the northern West Bank and planning to carry out a terror attack.
Dramatic CCTV footage shows about a dozen undercover forces making their way through a hospital corridor with guns raised. Most of them are armed, dressed as women with Muslim headscarves or hospital staff in scrubs or white doctor’s coats. One in a surgical mask carried a rifle in one arm and a folded wheelchair in the other.
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The joint IDF, ISA, and Israel Police counterterrorism operation saw Israeli forces kill Mohammed Jalamneh, 27, who it said was planning an imminent attack and was using the hospital as a hiding place. The IDF said Jalamneh was carrying a gun which was confiscated by the security forces.
According to the IDF, Jalamneh, 27, had been in the Jenin refugee camp for a long period, had contacts with Hamas headquarters abroad and was wounded when he tried to promote a car bombing attack. Additionally, he transferred weapons and ammunition to terrorists to promote shooting attacks and planned a raid.
Two additional terrorists, Mohammed Ghazawi and his brother Basel Ghazawi, were hiding inside the hospital and were also killed during the raid, the IDF said. The brothers were also from the Jenin Camp, with Mohammed Ghazawi being a terrorist operative of the Jenin Battalion who was involved in numerous attacks, including firing at IDF soldiers in the area in recent weeks, the IDF said.
The Jenin Battalion is an offshoot of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian Islamist group that has been designated as a terrorist organization by the State Department.
The military did not provide details on how the three were killed.
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The Palestinian Health Ministry said Israeli forces opened fire inside the wards. The ministry condemned the raid and called on the international community to pressure Israel’s military to halt such operations in hospitals, according to The AP.
Hospital spokesperson Tawfiq al-Shobaki said there was no exchange of fire, and the three were killed by Israeli forces in a targeted killing. He said the Israelis attacked doctors, nurses and hospital security during the raid.
"What happened is a precedent," he said. "There was never an assassination inside a hospital. There were arrests and assaults, but not an assassination."
Israel has come under heavy criticism for its raids on hospitals in Gaza, which have acted as a shelter for displaced people and also as a critical yet struggling lifeline for the tens of thousands of Palestinians wounded in the war.
Israel says terrorists use hospitals, especially in Gaza, to hide out or to launch operations. The military has found underground tunnels in the vicinity of hospitals and says it has located weapons and vehicles used in the Oct. 7 attack on hospital grounds.
The IDF said its forces will continue to act against "any threat that would endanger the security of Israeli civilians."
"For a long time, wanted suspects have been hiding in hospitals and using them as a base for planning terrorist activities and carrying out terror attacks, while they assume that the exploitation of hospitals will serve as protection against counterterrorism activities of Israeli security forces," an IDF statement reads.
"This is another example of the cynical use of civilian areas and hospitals as shelters and human shields by terrorist organizations."
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
