Gaza hospital chief admits to being Hamas commander

The head of a Gaza hospital has admitted to being a senior Hamas commander — and detailed how the terror group transformed the medical site into an operational hub that once housed a kidnapped Israeli soldier.

Ahmad Kahlot, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Jabaliya, made his taped confession to the Israeli security service Shin Bet after his arrest during last week’s raid on the facility in northern Gaza.

In a video of his interrogation released on X on Tuesday, Kahlot, dressed in an Israeli jail uniform and seated in front of Israel’s flag, said he joined Hamas in 2010 and held a rank equivalent to a brigadier-general.

Kahlot revealed that about 16 hospital staffers, including doctors, nurses, paramedics and clerks, were also members of Hamas’ notorious military wing, the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades.

According to the hospital chief, the medical facility under his care had been turned into an elaborate military hub where up to 100 Hamas terrorists had been holed up for days before moving to a different location.

Some of the group’s leaders even had offices with private phone lines inside the hospital, Kahlot said.

“There is a designated space for interrogations, internal security and special security,” he revealed.

Asked by the Shin Bet interrogator why Hamas’ top brass chose the hospital as their bolthole, Kahlot said, “Because from their perspective, the hospital is a safe place. They won’t be harmed inside the hospital.”

Kahlot also revealed that Hamas had once brought a kidnapped Israeli soldier to the hospital and used its own private ambulance service to transport the bodies of hostages tied to its Oct. 7 massacre. He did not name the soldier or say what happened to him later.

But the Hamas chief had some choice words for other leaders of his terror organization — blasting them as “cowards.

“They left us out in the open while they have gone into hiding,” he said. “The people are the ones who got screwed.

“They sacrificed us, unfortunately,” the hospital director added in a dejected tone of other bosses.

Israeli forces breached the Kamal Adwan Hospital on Dec. 12. Over the next few days, troops rounded up about 90 suspected Hamas terrorists inside the medical facility and seized piles of weapons, as seen in a viral video.

A World Health Organization official said Monday that the hospital is no longer functioning and that all its patients had been evacuated.

Israel has long maintained that Hamas uses hospitals throughout Gaza as its secret military bases.