JENIN: Zionist undercover agents, some disguised as medical staff, raided a West Bank hospital Tuesday and shot dead three Palestinian militants, in the first such operation in eight years. An AFP photographer saw a bullet hole on a pillow covered in blood following the raid at Ibn Sina Hospital in the northern city of Jenin, where Palestinians gathered around the bodies of those killed.

The Zionist military said forces entered the hospital — a major health facility serving Jenin city and its adjacent refugee camp — to target a Hamas cell. Announcing the killing by Zionist forces of three people inside the hospital, the Palestinian health ministry stressed healthcare facilities are granted special protection under international law.

“The minister of health calls urgently on the United Nations General Assembly, international institutions and human rights organizations to end the daily string of crimes committed by the occupation against our people and health centers,” a ministry statement said. The Palestinian foreign ministry said the “heinous” hospital killings were a “crime against humanity”, in a statement on X, formerly Twitter.

Closed-circuit television footage tweeted by the Palestinian ministry from the hospital shows armed men and women, disguised in medical uniforms or civilian clothes, moving through its corridors. The video shows the Zionist agents using a baby carrier and a wheelchair as props. Hospital director Naji Nazzal told AFP that “a group of (Zionist) forces entered the facility undercover and assassinated the men”. They used weapons fitted with silencers, he said.

Inside the hospital, the AFP photographer saw blood soaked into a mat and a chair, and spattered across a wall. The official Palestinian news agency Wafa named the three men as Muhammad Jalamnah, Muhammad Ayman Ghazawi and Basel Ayman Ghazawi. “The operation was carried out at the hospital’s rehabilitation ward where Basel Ghazawi had been undergoing treatment,” the hospital’s director said.

The Ghazawi brothers were claimed as fighters by the Islamic Jihad militant group, while Hamas said Jalamnah was a “commander” in its armed wing. Weapons were placed on the bodies of the Ghazawi brothers as they were carried through the streets of Jenin in a funeral procession.

The Zionist entity, which has occupied the West Bank since the 1967 Arab-Zionist war, has stepped up its incursions into Palestinian towns and cities since Oct 7. Jenin has been the focus of repeated Zionist raids, in which the army has demolished homes and ripped up streets as well as carrying out air strikes.

While Zionist troops frequently prevent paramedics from reaching those wounded in incursions, deadly raids inside hospitals are rare. The last one happened on Nov 12, 2015, when undercover agents pretending to bring in a pregnant woman raided a hospital in the southern West Bank city of Hebron. They detained a Palestinian and killed his cousin inside Al-Ahli Hospital. Since Oct 7, more than 370 people have been killed by Zionist troops and settlers in the West Bank, according to the health ministry in Ramallah. – AFP