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Hamas operatives captured by Israel admitted under interrogation that the bloodthirsty terror group callously uses hospitals and innocent civilians as human shields when launching strikes against Israeli forces.
The Israel Defense Forces released videos that showed several of the Hamas terrorists captured by Israel spilling the beans about how the group hides weapons under mattresses and poses as doctors and nurses to evade capture.
A senior IDF official said on Telegram that the terrorists were interrogated in Israel after being captured during a ground operation on Nov. 12
One of the captives, who identifies himself as Abdelrahaman Alaa Ibrahim Samur, tells an off-camera interrogator that “about a hundred” Hamas operatives “took control” of Rantisi Hospital in Gaza for about five days to “[carry] out attacks.”
“They were organized, with several tents, with each group of operatives by themselves [in groups of] 4-5 of them sitting together, all of them around the hospital,” the captured terrorist said.
He also admitted the terrorists “operated from the hospital… because it was a secure place, and no one could locate them there.”
“No one would suspect them,” Samur added. “It was better than operating from their homes.”
They used the hospital “as a base of operations,” he said, before launching missions outside.
Another captured Hamas fighter says he was inside the al-Shifa hospital, the largest hospital complex in Gaza, where he estimated about 50,000 people were seeking refuge.
“The doctors were furious because Hamas operatives and operatives of other terrorist organizations were inside the hospital,” he told the interrogator.
The unnamed Hamas fighter said there were around 100 terrorists at the hospital, including members of Islamic Jihad, the second-largest militant group in Hamas.
“They [Hamas operatives] dressed as nursing staff but they were not nurses or doctors,” he said. “Hamas operatives dressed as medical staff in order to blend in within the hospital wards, even in the ICU!”
A third man, who says his name is Hamuda Riad Asad Shamalah, tells the interviewer he was holed up in the Red Crescent building in Gaza with his family for “about three weeks.”
He estimated around 40,000 people were in the complex, with about half in the main building where he was with his wife and three daughters.
He claimed that Hamas fighters continued to operate when they stayed at the complex.
Hamas members hid rockets and guns by wrapping them in mattresses “on a daily basis,” Shamalah said, adding that the terrorists used tactics of fear to carry out their activities with impunity.
“No one can tell them no. Who could do so?” he said. “If you would dare to confront a Hamas member, he may kill you.”
Hamas chose the Red Crescent as a base of operations because “the sheer number of people in the place served as a protection for them,” the man revealed
“We became their human shields. It’s obvious that the IDF would not strike a place with 40,000 people in it,” he added.
In one segment, the captured fighter appears to disagree with the gruesome tactics deployed by Hamas members.
“If they want to fight, use the battlefield, it’s not okay that they used a place of shelter with so many people in it,” he said. “If one of their rockets, for example, would explode, it could kill 50 of us, or more.”
He described the Red Crescent building and al-Shifa hospital as “the only places that they could use to hide.”
While the video interviews and the captions they included could not be independently verified by The Post, the startling admissions buttress Israel’s long-held assertion that the terrorist organization is using hospitals to hide their activities and carry out operations.
Israel has faced intensifying criticism in recent weeks, including from allies, as Israeli forces carried out military campaigns in and around al-Shifa and other Gaza hospitals, which they’ve claimed repeatedly are being conducted to root out Hamas operatives using them for cover.
