Members of Hamas cracking down on Gazans. Photo: Screenshot from X account of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib

Hamas has been using Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis to torture and interrogate Palestinians, according to Israeli authorities.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and the Shin Bet security agency released a joint statement on Thursday saying they can now reveal intelligence showing that Hamas “conducts security interrogations and torture” at the hospital.

According to the statement, Hamas “sees an erosion in its support among the residents of the Gaza Strip and fears that it will lose its grip on the population,” causing the Palestinian terrorist group to ramp up its efforts to intimidate Gazans and crush any dissent.

צה”ל ושב”כ חושפים: ארגון הטרור חמאס מבצע חקירות ביטחוניות ועינויים בבית החולים ׳נאצר׳ בח’אן יונס

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— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) August 20, 2026

Hamas, which fully ruled Gaza before its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across Israel that launched the ensuing war, now controls roughly 40 percent of the enclave, in accordance with an October 2025 ceasefire that left the Israeli military in control of more than half the territory. Most of the Palestinian enclave’s population lives in the part under Hamas’s rule.

“According to the information we have, in the Yassin building, on the second floor of the hospital’s outpatient clinics, investigations are being conducted by Hamas’s internal security and military intelligence. Moreover, Hamas exploits the hospital as a center of government, regardless of its medical function, for interrogations, torture, and the collection of funds,” the Israeli statement said.

“Nasser Hospital continues to serve as Hamas’s main military infrastructure in the southern Gaza Strip,” the IDF and Shin Bet added. “Hospital patients and staff witness the regular presence of Hamas operatives, some of them masked, in various areas of the hospital compound.”

The statement came months after the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders publicly acknowledged in January that armed individuals — many of them masked — were present inside the large compound of Nasser Hospital, citing intimidation of patients, arbitrary arrests, and suspected weapons movement as reasons for halting some of its work there.

The admission appeared to corroborate claims long asserted by Israeli authorities about the use of medical facilities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), an allied terrorist group, during the conflict in Gaza.

For many months, the Israeli government and military have claimed that Hamas and other armed groups used hospitals — including Nasser — as shelter and operational bases, allegations that Palestinian authorities and many humanitarian organizations have rejected. In February 2024, IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said the military had “credible intelligence” that Hamas held Israeli hostages at Nasser Hospital at one point and that there may have been bodies of hostages currently hidden there.

The Algemeiner has previously documented claims acknowledged by the Palestinian Authority that Hamas summoned Gazans to the Nasser compound for interrogations and that militants threatened hospital staff.

Terrorists from both Hamas and PIJ have confessed that they took over hospitals across the enclave, using the medical facilities to hide military activities, launch attacks, and hold hostages kidnapped during their Oct. 7 attack.

The latest Israeli statement comes as the US seeks to move forward to the next phase of last year’s ceasefire, an effort that would require Hamas to disarm and relinquish control of Gaza.

However, Hamas has repeatedly refused to give up its weapons and taken advantage of the pause in fighting by tightening its control over civilian life while simultaneously rebuilding its military capabilities behind the scenes.

As part of this effort, the Palestinian terrorist group has been gradually reestablishing its civilian governance structures across the war-torn enclave, through checkpoints, strict regulation of goods, and control over key public institutions, including hospitals.

Hamas has also been reactivating internal security mechanisms to enforce day-to-day order, while conducting extensive intelligence operations aimed at identifying alleged “collaborators with Israel” and suppressing any opposition.

In June, armed Hamas operatives arrested Gazans in the streets and rounded up others at hospitals as the Islamist group moved to suppress planned protests calling for an end to its rule.

“The IDF warns the residents of the Gaza Strip – Hamas is afraid of losing control of the Gaza Strip, and therefore uses hospitals, schools and other civilian facilities for its own needs and harms them in areas intended to serve them,” the military and Shin Bet said in Thursday’s statement.

Last week, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research, an independent Palestinian polling and research institute, released a survey showing a significant decline in support for Hamas in both Gaza and the West Bank.