DUBAI, April 1./TASS/. Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Nasser Kanaani has urged the international community to carry out an investigation into what he calls a "war crime" committed by Israel during its operation at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
"The footage at Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza after a two-week blockade by the army of the Zionist regime (Israel - TASS), eyewitness evidence, as well as the videos and reports posted about the scale of destruction, torture, murders and the number of Palestinians detained in that hospital are horrifying and shocking," the diplomat wrote on X (formerly Twitter).
"It is imperative that an international investigation [be carried out]," Kanaani wrote, uploading footage of severe destruction in the vicinity of the hospital. "Will prominent human rights advocates support an international investigation into the scale of this obvious war crime, or will a selective and discriminatory approach to human rights once again prevail?" the diplomat asked.
Earlier on Monday, the Israeli military reported having ended its operation in the area of the major medical complex in the northern part of the Gaza Strip. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintained that the hospital had become the main terrorist headquarters of the Hamas movement. According to him, during the operation the military eliminated more than 200 armed radicals. The IDF assured that the soldiers sought not to harm civilians, patients or medical staff. However, according to the World Health Organization, 21 patients have died at Al Shifa over these last two weeks. The Palestinian Health Ministry called the military operation at the Al-Shifa hospital a violation of international humanitarian law, while the Iranian Foreign Ministry called it an act of barbarism.
Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria, as well as a ground operation against Hamas in the Gaza Strip in which 32,700 Palestinians have been killed and over 75,000 have been injured.