Israeli Forces Arrest and Physically Assault Al Jazeera Correspondent at Gaza's al-Shifa Hospital

Israeli forces have arrested and severely beaten Al Jazeera Arabic correspondent Ismail al-Ghoul in Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

Al-Ghoul was there early on Monday with his crew and other reporters to cover the Israeli army’s fourth raid into the hospital, where thousands of civilians are trapped, including medical staff, patients, and displaced families.

Witnesses said that the Al Jazeera reporter was dragged away by Israeli forces, who also destroyed the broadcasting vehicles of the news crews at the medical facility. The hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, has served as a base for journalists to report on Israel’s more than five-month war on the Palestinian enclave.

Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud, reporting from Rafah, said al-Ghoul has been “tortured, beaten, and detained by the Israeli military along with his crew member on the ground.”

Mahmoud, quoting witnesses, said many Palestinians were beaten and verbally abused, some blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs. They were then put inside an Israeli military truck and taken to an unknown location, he said.

Gaza’s Ministry of Health said Israeli forces launched missiles and opened fire on one of the hospital’s buildings, killing and injuring Palestinians, and a section of the hospital’s courtyard was bulldozed.

According to Mahmoud, Israeli forces also arrested more than 80 other Palestinians, including “women medical staff and [other] journalists.”

“The Israeli army made a list of allegations that they are looking for wanted people inside the complex, but so far they haven’t provided any substantial evidence… to justify what is happening inside al-Shifa,” Mahmoud said.

Israel has repeatedly said Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that governs the besieged Gaza Strip, has “regrouped” inside al-Shifa and is “using it to command attacks against Israel.”

Mansour Shouman, a citizen journalist who has reported from al-Shifa and Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, described hospitals in the enclave as “small towns” where journalists are trying to “deliver news to the world.”

Hospitals are one of the very few areas that have generators, which are essential to providing internet service, Shouman told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera Media Network has demanded the immediate release of al-Ghoul and other journalists detained alongside him, it said in a statement.