Top Palestinian police officer killed by Israel at northern Gaza hospital

A senior Palestinian police officer was killed by Israeli forces in the northern Gaza Strip on Monday, the government media office said.

In a statement, the media office said Brigadier General Fayeq al-Mabhouh, the head of police operations in Gaza, was killed in an Israeli raid on Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

According to the statement, Al-Mabhouh was responsible for coordinating the entry of humanitarian aid with Palestinian tribes and the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) into the northern Gaza Strip.

"This crime shows that Israel is seeking to spread chaos in Gaza and prevent the arrival of humanitarian aid to hundreds of thousands of hungry people in northern Gaza," it added.

The Israeli army, for its part, claimed that it killed the head of Hamas' Internal Security Service.

The military said in a statement that it received intelligence information from its internal security services, Shin Bet, and the Military Intelligence about the presence of several Hamas leaders in Al-Shifa Hospital.

Early on Monday, the Israeli army announced that its forces stormed the hospital, which houses thousands of ill and wounded patients, as well as displaced people.

According to Israeli public broadcaster KAN, around 80 Palestinians were detained from the facility.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on Gaza since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed nearly 1,200 people.

More than 31,700 Palestinians, mostly women and children, have since been killed in the enclave, and nearly 73,800 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza's population into internal displacement amid a crippling blockade of most food, clean water, and medicine, while 60%of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the ICJ. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.