Israeli soldiers disguised as doctors and patients kill Palestinians in their hospital beds
Jenin, West Bank - Israeli soldiers disguised as medical staff and patients raided a West Bank hospital Tuesday and assassinated three Palestinian men in their beds, in an operation that caused outrage.
An AFP photographer saw a bullet hole on a pillow covered in blood following the raid at Ibn Sina Hospital in the northern city of Jenin, where Palestinians gathered around the bodies of those killed.
The Israeli military said forces entered the hospital – a major health facility serving Jenin city and its adjacent refugee camp – to target a "Hamas terrorist cell."
Announcing the killing by Israeli forces of three people inside the hospital, the Palestinian health ministry stressed healthcare facilities are granted special protection under international law.
"The minister of health calls urgently on the United Nations General Assembly, international institutions and human rights organizations to end the daily string of crimes committed by the occupation (Israel) against our people and health centres," a ministry statement said.
The Palestinian foreign ministry said the "heinous" hospital killings were a "crime against humanity", in a statement on X.
Israeli soldiers use baby stroller as prop
Closed-circuit TV footage tweeted by the Palestinian ministry shows armed men and women, disguised in medical uniforms or civilian clothes, moving through its corridors.
The video shows the Israeli agents using a baby stroller and a wheelchair as props.
Hospital director Naji Nazzal told AFP that "a group of Israeli forces entered the facility undercover and assassinated the men". They used weapons fitted with silencers, he said.
Inside the hospital, the AFP photographer saw blood soaked into a mat and a chair, and spattered across a wall.
The official Palestinian news agency Wafa named the three men as Muhammad Jalamnah, Muhammad Ayman Ghazawi, and Basel Ayman Ghazawi.
"The operation was carried out at the hospital's rehabilitation ward where Basel Ghazawi had been undergoing treatment," the hospital's director said.
The Ghazawi brothers were claimed as fighters by the Islamic Jihad militant group, while Hamas said Jalamnah was a "commander" in its armed wing.
Israeli forces and settler kill hundreds in West Bank
The Israeli army claimed the men they killed were "terrorists" who were hiding in the hospital.
Hospitals are protected buildings in international humanitarian law. Targeting them in military operations – as Israel has done repeatedly – is considered to be a war crime unless they become the site from which an imminent attack is about to be launched.
Jenin, which has been illegally occupied since 1967, is often the focus of brutal Israeli raids, in which the army has demolished homes, ripped up streets, carried out air strikes, and prevented paramedics from reaching those wounded.
While Israel has killed over 26,000 people in Gaza since the October 7 Hamas attack, some 370 Palestinians have also been killed by IDF forces and extremist settlers in the West Bank.
The International Court of Justice last week determined that at least some of Israel's actions and stated intentions plausibly fall under the 1948 Genocide Conventions.
Cover photo: Collage: via REUTERS