Photos of Israeli hostages held in Gaza found on laptops in Al Shifa hospital, IDF says

Photos and videos showing some of the 200 Israeli hostages kidnapped to Gaza have been discovered on laptops during a raid of Al Shifa hospital, the Israel Defense Forces said.

The photos were taken after the hostages had been whisked off to Gaza following the deadly Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas terrorists, Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus, the IDF spokesman for foreign media, told BBC News reporters who accompanied Israeli soldiers inside Al Shifa Wednesday.

“We uncovered a lot of computers and other equipment which could really shed light on the current situation, hopefully regarding hostages as well,” Conricus said.

The laptops were also allegedly found to contain footage, recently released by Israeli police, of their interrogations of captured Hamas terrorists.

The BBC said it was not shown the contents of the laptops — and claimed its journalists were barred from talking to hospital patients or doctors during their “tightly controlled” visit.

Conricus did show the correspondents a stockpile of Kalashnikov assault rifles, ammunition and bulletproof vests inside the hospital’s MRI unit,

In total, raiding Israeli forces have seized about 15 firearms, as well as grenades, the IDF rep said.

Also found inside Gaza’s main hospital were military booklets in Arabic published by Hamas’ military wing — and a map Conricus said was marked with potential entry and exit routes to and from the besieged medical center, where hundreds of patients and staff have found themselves trapped.

Conricus suggested that Hamas fighters were at Al Shifa “within the last few days.”

The IDF spokesman said that all this goes to show that Hamas conceals its command centers beneath Gaza’s hospitals to avoid airstrikes.

Israeli troops raided Al Shifa early Wednesday, going room to room inside the medical complex in search of terrorists, weapons and other evidence proving that Hamas had been using the hospital as its headquarters.

Gaza’s health ministry said there was no water, food, or baby milk in Al Shifa, which was crowded with 650 patients and 7,000 people displaced by weeks of airstrikes.

Medics have previously said dozens of patients, including three premature babies, had died in the hospital due to lack of power and basic supplies.

Israel has maintained that Hamas was operating a headquarters in a complex of tunnels under the hospital — a claim that was backed by President Biden.

“You have a circumstance where the first war crime is being committed by Hamas by having their headquarters, their military, hidden under a hospital,” Biden said Wednesday. “And that’s a fact.”

But more than 24 hours after taking control of Al Shifa, the Israeli army had yet to furnish proof of the existence of a subterranean Hamas command post. 

Israeli commandos continued combing through the hospital buildings Thursday.

“The operation is shaped by our understanding that there is well-hidden terrorist infrastructure in the complex,” an iDF official said.

Hamas has denied operating at Al Shifa and accused Israel of planting the weapons shown to BBC to justify treating the hospital as a military target.

With Post wires