The U.S. is “confident” that Palestinian militant groups used Gaza’s largest hospital to hold “at least a few" hostages seized during their bloody Oct. 7 attack and to house command infrastructure. That's according to an American intelligence assessment declassified Tuesday and shared by a U.S. official. The assessment offers the firmest U.S. support for Israeli claims about the Shifa hospital complex, which was raided by Israeli forces in November in an operation decried by global humanitarian organizations and some members of President Joe Biden’s party. Yet the information released doesn’t fully back some of Israel's most significant allegations that the hospital served as the central node for activities by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
