Hamas using Gaza hospital as a torture chamber – report

IDF, Shin Bet say Hamas is using a Gaza hospital for interrogations and torture.

By World Israel News Staff

The IDF and Shin Bet said Thursday that newly disclosed intelligence shows Hamas is using Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis to interrogate and torture Palestinians, as the terrorist group seeks to tighten its grip over a Gaza population increasingly resistant to its rule.

In a joint statement, the Israeli military and domestic security agency said Hamas has stepped up the activities of its internal security apparatus amid what they described as declining public support for the group.

Hamas is “increasing the activity of its security apparatuses and attempting to impose its rule through intimidation, interrogations, and torture of residents,” the agencies said.

According to the IDF and Shin Bet, Hamas security personnel are currently operating from multiple locations inside the Nasser Medical Complex, one of the most important functioning hospitals in the southern Gaza Strip.

“According to the information in our possession, in the Yassin building, on the second floor of the hospital’s outpatient clinics, interrogations by Hamas’s internal security and military intelligence are taking place,” the statement said.

The agencies said the activity goes beyond questioning suspected opponents.

“Beyond this, Hamas exploits the hospital as a center of governance unrelated to its medical function, for the purposes of interrogations, torture, and collecting money,” they said.

Another part of the hospital complex has also been converted into an interrogation facility, according to the Israeli intelligence.

The IDF and Shin Bet said the building had previously served as hospital offices, then a cafeteria and later a place of worship before being repurposed as a Hamas interrogation center.

Israel said Hamas personnel maintain a permanent presence throughout parts of the medical compound, including armed or masked operatives, creating an atmosphere of intimidation for patients and employees.

“Hamas’s use of the hospital creates fear and harms patients, service providers, and medical staff,” the statement said.

The Israeli agencies described Nasser Hospital as continuing to function as a “major military infrastructure” for Hamas and said the latest intelligence was part of a broader pattern in which the group uses hospitals, schools and other civilian sites to maintain control over Gaza.

The claim that Hamas has used Nasser Hospital to interrogate and abuse Palestinians is supported in part by findings from sources independent of Israel.

A United Nations Commission of Inquiry reported in June that it had reasonable grounds to conclude that Hamas’s Sahm Unit had “interrogated and mistreated Palestinian civilians” at Nasser Medical Complex during 2024 and 2025.

The commission documented several violent incidents on hospital grounds.

In one case, according to the UN report, a Palestinian man accused of illegally selling tobacco was tied in a stress position and beaten with a metal pipe.

Another man, accused of drug trafficking and supporting the United States and Israel, was stripped to his underwear and held down while Hamas terrorists repeatedly struck his legs with a cement block and metal pipe.

The commission also documented a case in which a Palestinian man accused of stealing was shot three times in the knees in front of a crowd outside the hospital.

A witness interviewed by the UN described hearing screams from a building on the Nasser compound on multiple occasions and seeing masked individuals linked to Hamas’s Sahm Unit leave the building afterward.

Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières, separately suspended non-critical operations at Nasser Hospital in January following security incidents inside the complex.

MSF said its personnel and patients had witnessed masked armed men inside portions of the hospital, as well as intimidation and arbitrary arrests of patients. The organization also reported one incident involving the suspected movement of weapons.

Those developments were “completely unacceptable,” MSF said.

The aid organization later resumed core medical operations in April after saying Gaza authorities had introduced measures intended to improve security, including restrictions on bringing weapons into the hospital.

Israel has for years accused Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad of embedding military and security operations in Gaza hospitals.

The IDF previously raided Nasser Hospital during the war and said intelligence indicated that Israeli hostages had been held there. Former hostages have also said they were detained at the hospital.

Thursday’s announcement focused specifically on Hamas’s treatment of Palestinians and the group’s efforts to maintain political control following growing expressions of opposition to its rule.

“Hamas is afraid of losing control of the Strip,” the IDF said, warning Gaza residents that the group was consequently using hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities for its own purposes.

The IDF and Shin Bet said the use of civilian infrastructure for interrogations and torture was not isolated, but part of a broader Hamas practice of turning protected civilian institutions into instruments of its security apparatus.

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