Anyone who thinks there’s a red line Hamas terrorists won’t cross is mistaken: The command center of Hamas’s military wing chief was located 7–8 meters beneath the neonatal intensive care unit at the European Hospital in Khan Younis. Hamas leaders used newborn babies as human shields.
Hamas military leaders believed they were well protected, hiding beneath the largest hospital in southern Gaza. Their command center was directly under the NICU, their war room beneath inpatient wards, and their tunnels passed under operating rooms.
Their working assumption: the IDF wouldn’t strike a central hospital packed with patients. That belief was reinforced during an earlier IDF drill in Khan Younis in which the hospital was deliberately avoided. Confident in this, Hamas ran tunnels beneath the ER, ORs, and NICU.
On May 13, the Shin Bet obtained critical intelligence and passed it immediately to the IDF. A swift operation was launched, focusing on bombings at specific tunnel sections. Shin Bet and Military Intelligence provided highly precise tunnel coordinates. Success depended entirely on pinpoint bomb accuracy—each bomb weighed a ton.
