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By Pesach Benson, JNS
Hamas is using ambulances to transport terrorists and weapons around Gaza, an Israeli military spokesman said on Friday.
The Israel Defense Forces Spokesperson’s Unit said on Friday that an aircraft struck an ambulance in the Gaza Strip that according to military intelligence was being used by a Hamas unit very close to the combat zone. The military added that several terrorists were killed in the strike near Gaza’s Dar Al-Shifa Hospital.
The Israeli military has previously revealed that Hamas makes extensive use of Shifa Hospital. On Friday, Israel released a recording of a phone call confirming that Hamas is storing at least half a million liters of fuel underneath the hospital.
The ambulance strike raised a commotion at the United Nations, leading U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres to tweet that he was “horrified” by the Israeli attack.
“Now, for nearly one month, civilians in Gaza, including children & women, have been besieged, denied aid, killed & bombed out of their homes,” Guterres tweeted. “This must stop.”
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Gilad Erdan accused Guterres of lying.
“Once again, you rush to condemn Israel without even bothering to ask what happened. You blatantly lie regarding the lack of aid entering Gaza, and you completely ignore the fact that Hamas intentionally exploits ambulances for terror,” tweeted Erdan.
“You didn’t ask for the truth bc [because] you don’t care about the truth,” Erdan added. “Instead, you prefer to falsely condemn Israel while making our hostages a literal footnote. It’s absolutely disgraceful. Where was your ‘horror’ when Hamas deliberately targeted Israeli ambulances with RPGs and executed paramedics in cold blood?”
Also on Friday, a senior U.S. official in the Biden administration told reporters that Hamas had attempted to evacuate some of its injured fighters from Gaza in ambulances along with thousands of foreign nationals trying to flee the Strip. Egyptian and U.S. officials at the Rafah crossing who vetted the list of evacuees found that 76 people—a third of the names on the list—were Hamas terrorists.
The U.S. official added that Hamas repeatedly offered lists of evacuees that contained its injured personnel. In the end, nobody connected to the terror group was let out. The official added that the issue caused a significant delay before the wounded Palestinians were finally allowed to leave.
