The Associated Press reported on Sunday that "Israel has provided little evidence that Hamas fighters were present in the hospitals targeted in the Gaza Strip in many cases."

This came in an investigation conducted by the American agency over the course of months, during which it collected testimonies about the Israeli raids that targeted Al-Awda, Al-Indonesian, and Kamal Adwan hospitals in the Gaza Strip, including interviews with more than 30 patients, witnesses, and workers in the medical and humanitarian fields, in addition to Israeli officials.

The investigation concluded that "Israel provided little evidence of the presence of Hamas fighters in those cases."

The Associated Press reported that the Israeli military spokesman's office declined to comment on a list of incidents related to Israeli attacks on hospitals in the Gaza Strip.

The agency quoted the office as saying that it "cannot comment on specific events."

Since the beginning of the war on the Gaza Strip on October 7, the Israeli army has deliberately targeted Gaza’s hospitals and health system, putting them out of service, endangering the lives of patients and the wounded, according to Palestinian and international data.

The agency says: "These hospitals were built to be places of healing. But once again, Israeli forces surrounded three hospitals in northern Gaza and came under fire.

Heavy bombardment is underway around it as Israel claims to be launching a new offensive against Hamas fighters it says have regrouped nearby. As staff rush to treat waves of wounded, they remain haunted by a war that has seen hospitals targeted with an intensity and publicity rarely seen in modern warfare.

The three hospitals were besieged and attacked by Israeli forces about ten months ago. Kamal Adwan, Al Awda and Indonesian hospitals have not yet recovered from the damage, yet they are the only partially functioning hospitals in the area.

Medical facilities often come under fire in war, but combatants often portray such incidents as accidental or exceptional, since hospitals have special protections under international law. In its year-long campaign in Gaza, Israel has been notable for carrying out an open-ended assault on hospitals, besieging and raiding at least 10 across the Gaza Strip, some multiple times, and hitting many others in airstrikes.

Israel claims this is a military necessity in its goal of destroying Hamas after the October 7 attacks. It also claims that Hamas uses hospitals as "command and control bases" to plan attacks, house fighters and hide hostages. It claims this negates the protection of hospitals.

“If we intend to destroy the military infrastructure in the north, we have to destroy the philosophy of (using) hospitals,” Israeli military spokesman Adm. Daniel Hagari said of Hamas in an interview with The Associated Press in January after the first round of hospital strikes.

Israel has twice raided Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in the Strip, and produced video animations depicting it as a major Hamas base, although the evidence it presented remains disputed.

But the focus on Shifa has overshadowed strikes on other facilities. The Associated Press spent months gathering accounts of the strikes on the al-Awda, Indonesian and Kamal Adwan hospitals, interviewing more than three dozen patients, witnesses, medical and humanitarian workers, as well as Israeli officials.

It found that Israel had provided little evidence of a significant Hamas presence in those cases. The Associated Press provided a file listing the incidents reported by those interviewed to the Israeli military spokesman’s office. The office said it could not comment on specific incidents.

Al Awda Hospital: “Death Sentence”

The Israeli military has never claimed that Hamas was present at Al-Awda Hospital. Asked about the intelligence that led troops to surround and raid the hospital last year, the military spokesman’s office did not respond.

In recent weeks, the hospital has been paralyzed again, with Israeli forces fighting in the nearby Jabalia refugee camp and no food, water or medical supplies entering northern Gaza. Hospital director Mohammed Salha said last month that the facility was surrounded by troops and had been unable to evacuate six critically ill patients. Staff were forced to eat just one meal a day, usually just flat bread or a spoonful of rice, he said.

As the war's wounded poured in, exhausted surgeons struggled to treat them. There were no vascular or neurosurgeons left north of Gaza City, so doctors often resorted to amputating limbs shattered by shrapnel to save lives.

“We are reliving the nightmares of November and December last year, but worse,” said Dr. Mohammed Salha, the hospital’s director. “We have fewer supplies, fewer doctors, and less hope that anything will be done to stop this.”

The Israeli military, which did not respond to a specific request for comment on Al-Awda Hospital, says it takes every possible precaution to prevent civilian casualties.

Last year, fighting was raging around Al-Awda Hospital when a shell exploded in the facility's operating room on November 21. Dr. Mahmoud Abu Nujila, two other doctors and a patient's uncle died almost instantly, according to the international charity Doctors Without Borders, which said it had provided the Israeli military with its coordinates.

Dr. Mohammed Obaid, a colleague of Abu Nujaila's, recalled trying to avoid shelling inside the hospital compound. Hospital officials said Israeli sniper fire killed a nurse and two cleaners and wounded one.

By December 5, Al-Awda Hospital was under siege. Coming back and forth became a “death sentence” for 18 days, Obaid said.

Survivors and hospital managers recounted at least four occasions when Israeli drones or snipers killed or seriously wounded Palestinians as they tried to enter. Staff said two women about to give birth were shot and bled to death on the street. Salha, the manager, watched as his cousin, Soma, and her 6-year-old son were shot and killed as she carried the boy to be treated for his wounds.

The agency quotes Shatha al-Shuraim as saying that labor pains left her with no choice but to walk an hour to al-Awda Hospital to give birth. She, her mother-in-law and her 16-year-old brother-in-law held up flags made of white blouses. Her mother-in-law, Khatam Shariir, kept shouting: “Civilians!” Right at the gate, a volley of bullets returned, killing one of the group.

On December 23, troops stormed the hospital, ordering the men, aged between 15 and 65, to strip and submit to interrogation in the courtyard. Mazen Khalidi, whose injured right leg had been amputated, said nurses begged the soldiers to let him rest rather than join the blindfolded and shackled men outside. They refused, and he stumbled downstairs, the stump of his leg bleeding.

“Humiliation scared me more than death,” Khalidi said.

Israeli forces arrested the hospital director, Ahmed Mahna; his whereabouts remain unknown. One of Gaza’s most prominent doctors, orthopedic surgeon Adnan al-Barsh, was also arrested during the raid and died in Israeli custody in May.

In the wreckage of the November bombing, staff found a message Abu Nujila had written on the whiteboard in the previous weeks.

“Whoever survives to the end will tell the story,” the message read in English. “We did our best. Remember us.”

Indonesian Hospital: 'Patients are dying before your eyes'

On Oct. 18, several blocks away, artillery hit the upper floors of the Indonesian Hospital, staff said. People fled in fear for their lives. Israeli forces had effectively surrounded them, leaving doctors and patients inside without enough food, water and supplies.

“The shelling around us has increased,” said Eddy Wahyudi, an Indonesian volunteer. “It has paralyzed us.”

Muhannad Hadi, the UN Humanitarian Coordinator for the Palestinian Territories, said two patients died due to power outages and lack of supplies.

Tamer al-Kurd, a nurse at the hospital, said only about 44 patients and two doctors remained. He said he was so dehydrated he began hallucinating. “People come to me to save them,” he said in a weak voice message. “I can’t do it by myself, with two doctors. I’m tired.”

The Israeli military said on Saturday it had facilitated the evacuation of 29 patients from the Indonesian hospital and back.

The Indonesian Hospital is the largest hospital in northern Gaza. Today, its upper floors are burned, its walls are riddled with shrapnel, and its gates are strewn with piles of rubble—all a legacy of Israel’s blockade in the fall of 2023.

Rather, the attack, the Israeli military claimed, was an underground command and control center located beneath the hospital. It released blurry satellite images of what it said was a tunnel entrance in the courtyard and a nearby rocket launch pad, outside the hospital complex.

The Indonesia-based group that funds the hospital has denied any Hamas presence. “If there was a tunnel, we would know,” Arif Rahman, the hospital director for the Indonesia-based Emergency Medical Rescue Committee, told The Associated Press last month. “We know this building because we built it brick by brick, layer by layer. It’s ridiculous.”

After surrounding and raiding the hospital, the military did not mention or show evidence of the facility or the underground tunnels it had previously claimed. When asked if any tunnels had been found, the military spokesman’s office did not respond.

It released photos of two vehicles found at the compound - a pickup truck with military vests and a blood-stained car belonging to a kidnapped Israeli, suggesting he had been taken to hospital on October 7, 2023. Hamas said it had taken the wounded hostages to hospitals for treatment.

During the siege, Israeli shelling moved closer and closer, hitting the second floor of the Indonesian Hospital on November 20, killing 12 people and wounding dozens, according to staff. Israel said its forces responded to “enemy fire” from the hospital but denied using shells.

Over the next few days, fires ripped through the walls and quickly spread through the intensive care unit. Explosions set fires outside the hospital grounds, where about 1,000 displaced Palestinians had taken refuge, according to staff. The Israeli military denied targeting the hospital, though it acknowledged that nearby shelling may have damaged it.

For three weeks, the wounded streamed in—up to 500 a day into a facility that could hold 200. Supplies had not entered for weeks. Blood-stained sheets piled up. Doctors, some working 24-hour shifts, ate just a few dates a day. The discovery of moldy flour on November 23 was particularly dramatic.

Without medicine or ventilators, doctors could do little. Wounds became infected. Doctors said they had performed dozens of amputations on injured limbs. Medics estimated that a fifth of the patients arriving had died. At least 60 bodies lay in the courtyard. Others were buried under a nearby playground.

“Seeing patients dying in front of your eyes because you don’t have the ability to help them means you have to ask yourself: Where is the humanity?” asked Durgham Abu Ibrahim, one of the volunteers.

Kamal Adwan: "This makes no sense"

Kamal Adwan Hospital, once the hub of the health system in northern Gaza, was on fire on Thursday of last week.

The World Health Organization, which delivered the equipment a few days ago, said Israeli shells hit the third floor, sparking a fire that destroyed medical supplies. The hospital director, Hussam Abu Safia, said the artillery hit water tanks and damaged a dialysis unit, seriously injuring four medics who tried to put out the fire.

In videos of him pleading for help over the past weeks, Abu Safia had tried to maintain his composure as Israeli forces surrounded the hospital. But last weekend, tears filled his eyes.

“They burned everything we built,” he said, his voice breaking. “They burned our hearts. They killed my son.”

On October 25, 2024, Israeli forces stormed the hospital after what an Israeli military official described as heavy fighting with militants nearby. The official said Israeli fire targeted the hospital's oxygen tanks during the battle because "they could be booby-traps."

Israeli forces withdrew after three days, during which Palestinian health officials said nearly all of Kamal Adwan Hospital's medical staff were detained, an Israeli drone killed at least one doctor and two children died in intensive care when generators stopped working.

Days later, a drone struck Abu Safia’s son in nearby Jabaliya. The 21-year-old had been shot by Israeli snipers during the first military strike on Kamal Adwan last December. Now buried in the hospital courtyard, Abu Safia and another doctor were the only ones left to treat the dozens of wounded who poured in every day from new strikes on Jabaliya.

The Israeli military said troops arrested 100 people, some of whom were “posing as medical personnel.” The military said soldiers stripped the men to check for weapons, before sending those deemed armed to detention camps. The military said the hospital was “operating at full capacity, with all departments continuing to treat patients.” It released footage of several rifles and an RPG launcher with several rounds of ammunition it said it found inside the hospital.

Kamal Adwan Hospital staff say more than 30 medical workers are still being held, including the head nurse, who works for MedGlobal, a US organization that sends medical teams to disaster zones, and Dr. Mohammed Obaid, a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders who previously worked at Al-Awda Hospital and has moved to Kamal Adwan Hospital.

The unrest was echoed by Israel’s nine-day siege of Kamal Adwan last December. On Dec. 12, soldiers entered and allowed police dogs to attack staff, patients and others, according to multiple witnesses. Ahmed Atabil, 36, who had taken refuge in the hospital, said he saw a dog bite a man’s finger.

Witnesses said soldiers ordered boys and men, ranging in age from their mid-teens to their 60s, to stand in rows outside the hospital, squatting in the cold, blindfolded and nearly naked, for hours of interrogation. “Every time one of them raised his head, he was beaten,” said Mohamed al-Masry, a lawyer who was arrested.

The Israeli military later released footage of the men walking out of the hospital. Al-Masri identified himself in the footage. He said the soldiers staged the photos, ordering the men to drop the hospital guards’ guns as if they were surrendering militants. Israel said all the photos released were authentic and that it had captured dozens of suspected militants.

Three detainees said that when soldiers released some of the men after interrogation, they opened fire on them as they tried to re-enter the hospital, wounding five of them. Ahmed Abu Hajjaj recalled hearing bursts of gunfire as he made his way back in the dark. “I thought, this doesn’t make sense – who are they going to shoot?” he said.

Eyewitnesses said a bulldozer entered the hospital compound, destroying buildings. Abu Safia, Abu Hajjaj and Al-Masri described being held by soldiers inside the hospital while they heard people screaming outside.

After the soldiers withdrew, the men saw that the bulldozer had crushed tents that had previously housed about 2,500 people. Most of the displaced had been evacuated, but Abu Safia said he found the bodies of four people crushed, with shrapnel from their recent hospital treatment still on their limbs.