[35] On 22 November, Israel published video showing multiple tunnels beneath the hospital;[36] The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian reported that this fell short of the original command center claims.

[44][45] The raid on the hospital and Israel's limited findings of military infrastructure led to international criticism,[46][47][48][49] including by UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk who called for an independent investigation.

[88] On 6 November, Israeli forces struck and destroyed the solar panels atop the hospital, leaving it fully reliant on back-up generators powered by rapidly dwindling fuel supplies.

[114] The IDF released a photo of a soldier standing beside boxes labelled as medical supplies and baby food and Reuters confirmed that the location was inside Al Shifa.

[115][116] The IDF released a video showing them depositing at the front gate of al-Shifa 300 litres of fuel and a photo of a soldier loading mobile incubators.

Izzat al-Risheq, a Hamas official, denied allegations that the group was using Shifa Hospital as a shield for its underground military structures, saying there was no truth to the statements.

[130][131] On 14 November 2023, the U.S. National Security Council spokesperson, John Kirby, said that the United States had its own intelligence sources indicating that Al Shifa hospital was being used by Hamas to run military operations and store weapons, which constitutes a war crime.

[135] Investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill stated that the "Israelis have a multidecade track record of lying, of promoting false information, releasing doctored videos".

[136] Jeremy Bowen, BBC News' international editor, noted that there is no independent scrutiny inside the hospital, since journalists are working under the supervision of the Israeli military.

[139][dubious – discuss][better source needed] Mounir El Barsh, the Gaza health ministry director, stated the Israeli tunnel statement was a "pure lie" and that the IDF had already been on the al-Shifa complex for eight days.

It's not clear if these rooms were prepared to receive hostages, but there is no doubt they were used by Hamas company, battalion and brigade commanders, and that fighting was directed from there in recent rounds, if not in the current war as well.

[41] On 2 January 2024 newly declassified documents by the United States showed that its spy agencies continued to express confidence that the hospital had been used as a command and control centre, while providing no visual evidence.

Amidst the siege, Hamas suspended hostage negotiations due to Israel's takeover of al-Shifa Hospital and heavy fire as Israeli forces approached the facility.

[155] Gaza officials said an airstrike destroyed the hospital's cardiac ward, while a power cut shut down the neonatal unit's incubators where around 40 children were hosted and ventilators for others receiving urgent care.

The Nation described the campaign as propaganda, and stated that the video was widely mocked, with many Arabs questioning its authenticity, and the ministry deleting the tweet in a day.

[160] The Daily Beast, remarking on the video, said "Everything about it smacked of high school theater—from the botched accent that sounded like it was straight out of an Israeli soap opera to the perfectly scripted IDF talking points rolling off her tongue.

They discussed how the failure of the incubators in the Neonatal intensive care unit of al-Shifa caused by the denial of fuel deliveries by Israel and the cutting of electricity was responsible for the deaths of three prematurely born babies.

[178] A survivor of the subsequent siege reported that hundreds of members of the non-military wings of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) who were employed in the hospital had gathered there inside to receive their salaries.

[54] Financial Times reported "gun battles" around the facility where thousands of people were sheltering as Israeli forces aimed to prevent Hamas fighters from regrouping in Gaza's north.

[195] Israeli airstrikes around the hospital left residents searching for survivors with their bare hands, with a young boy stating to journalists, "For God's sake, I have nowhere to go… all my family were killed".

[206] According to Mads Gilbert, medical staff were detained, kept in the cold for hours, subjected to "humiliating investigations", and one doctor was shot in the chest while attempting to comply with Israeli forces' orders.

[212] Footage of four-year-old Saja Junaid went viral, showing the severely burned girl forced to flee the hospital to Deir el-Balah, with journalists stating she hadn't eaten in three days.

[215] Hani Mahmoud, a journalist on the ground, stated, "The Israeli military is now ordering everyone inside the hospital, including medical staff and patients, to evacuate immediately.

[236] A resident living 1 km from the hospital stated, "Explosions never stop, we see lines of smoke coming from inside, no one moves even in streets that are hundreds of metres away because of Israeli snipers on rooftops of buildings.

[254] On 5 April 2024, a WHO-led mission visited Al-Shifa to perform an initial evaluation of the extent of destruction and to determine needs to guide efforts to restore the facility in the future.

The mission said that the destruction had left the facility non-functional; short-term restoration of minimal functionality seemed implausible and would require efforts to evaluate and clear the grounds for unexploded military devices.

Former managing director of Al Jazeera, Yasser Abu Hilalah, wrote on X, "Hamas investigations revealed that the story of the rape of women in Shifa Hospital was fabricated."

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), stated that "Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women, and the wounded, while others were found tied and stripped of their clothes.

"[294] Ayman Safadi, the Jordanian Minister of Foreign Affairs, condemned the attack, stating, it was a "violation of international humanitarian law, especially the 1949 Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.

[303] Major-General Giora Eiland, former head of the Israeli National Security Council, stated that targeting the hospital was tactical,- aiming to control the narrative about Hamas rather than serving a strategic purpose.