Israeli army claimed Hamas tunnel was under Gaza hospital but showed footage of nearby school

Palestinians inspect damage after the European Hospital was partially damaged in Israeli airstrikes in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, 13 May 2025

Bar Peleg, Nir Hasson and Avi Scharf report in Haaretz on 15 May 2025:

The Israeli army said on Monday that it had uncovered a terror tunnel at the European Hospital in Khan Yunis following an assassination attempt on senior Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar, but aerial footage released by the military shows a tunnel located beneath a nearby school.

Dozens of videos from the strike have been released, but none show damage to the school where the tunnel is reportedly located – only to the hospital grounds. The Israel Defense Forces has not clarified whether the school was targeted or if the strike on the hospital merely exposed the tunnel’s existence beneath the adjacent school.

The IDF Spokesperson’s Unit responded by saying that the tunnel extended beneath both the hospital and the adjacent area highlighted in the footage. However, no evidence has been presented to substantiate this claim.

An Israeli security source confirmed that incorrect footage of the tunnel had been circulated, but the IDF maintains that the school is considered part of the hospital complex due to its proximity.

The IDF released the footage on Tuesday, just hours after the strike, under the title “The European Hospital.” The video shows a building marked with signs of what is described as exposed underground infrastructure following the attack. In the statement accompanying the footage, the army claimed that “the IDF and Shin Bet security service destroyed a Hamas underground terror infrastructure located beneath the European Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the southern Gaza Strip.”

However, a review of the maps and aerial footage reveals that the structure is not the hospital but the nearby Jenin School. The school’s Facebook page features numerous photos of its courtyard, which is the exact location where the IDF claims the tunnel was dug.

Footage analyzed by Haaretz showed at least six craters from Israeli Air Force munitions inside and outside the hospital grounds, including at the entrance to the emergency room and along the facility’s access road.

Surveillance footage from the hospital entrance released on Wednesday shows one of the strikes with several bystanders appearing to be wounded in the explosion. However, most of the damage seemed to occur underground. Forty-five seconds after the missile impact, the ground collapsed, likely indicating the presence of an underground complex.

16 Palestinians were killed and about 70 were wounded in the attack, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants. It remains unclear whether Sinwar or other senior Hamas members were killed in the strike.

In a statement, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said, “The tunnel ran beneath the European Hospital and the surrounding area.” It further clarified that the footage released on Wednesday, showing the destroyed underground infrastructure, marked the area near the hospital, not the establishment itself.

Throughout the war, several international media outlets raised concerns about the lack of sufficient evidence provided by the IDF to support claims of terror infrastructure within Gaza’s hospitals.

In November, AP published an investigation reviewing the evidence the IDF presented regarding three hospitals in northern Gaza – Al-Shifa, Al-Awda and the Indonesian Hospital. The report said that Israel provided minimal, if any, evidence of a significant Hamas presence in these hospitals.

In December 2023, The Washington Post reported that the IDF failed to provide evidence proving Hamas operated a command center beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest hospital in Gaza City, which had been a central target of a major military operation.  In February, The New York Times outlined the network of terror tunnels beneath Al-Shifa Hospital, noting that Hamas had indeed dug tunnels under one of the hospital’s buildings, likely connecting to a larger tunnel system. However, the report added that the IDF failed to provide evidence supporting the claim that this tunnel network functioned as a Hamas command center.

In December, after a prolonged siege and raid on Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza, which the IDF labeled a terror compound, the army released footage showing a small weapons cache, including a handgun and several grenades, found “within and around the hospital.”

On Tuesday morning, the IDF carried out another strike on a hospital in Gaza, targeting the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. Journalist Hassan Aslih, who the IDF claims was a member of Hamas’ Khan Yunis Brigade, was killed in the attack. Aslih had entered Israel during the October 7 attack and captured footage of a burning Israeli tank near the Gaza border.

This article is reproduced in its entirety