Israeli troops have withdrawn from the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, the Israel Defense Forces said on Monday, having wrapped up a raid launched Friday against Hamas operatives it said were using the Jabalia hospital as a command and control base.

The hospital raid did not bring the IDF’s activities in northern Gaza to a close, however, with the military saying that according to its assessments, hundreds more Hamas operatives remain in the Jabalia area. Thus, it said, the operation launched there three weeks ago would continue.

In the weeks before the hospital raid, the military said it enabled the evacuation of patients and staff from the compound while ensuring that the medical center’s emergency systems continued to function, including by activating an additional generator for patients on life support.

Hundreds of civilians using the hospital as a shelter were also evacuated from the area, the IDF said.

Kamal Adwan is the last functioning hospital in Gaza’s north. The facility said that the shortages it has struggled with since the start of the war last year have been increasingly aggravated by the latest Israeli offensive in the north of the Strip.

The IDF said that some 40 terror operatives were detained during the evacuations from the hospital, and the Navy’s elite Shayetet 13 commando unit detained dozens more during the subsequent raid, including some who had participated in the October 7 terror onslaught in southern Israel.

The detained operatives were taken to Israel for further questioning.

The IDF released footage from the interrogation of a detained individual, who identified himself as a driver and paramedic for Kamal Adwan Hospital and Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City.

He alleged in the footage that Hamas was using ambulances at the hospital to move operatives around.

“Hamas military operatives are present. They are in the courtyards, at the gates of the buildings, in the offices,” he said when asked about the terror group’s operations around Kamal Adwan Hospital.

“They operate ambulances to transport their wounded military operatives and to transport them for their missions,” he went on. “This is instead of using the ambulances for the benefit of civilians.”

“We, the public in the northern Gaza Strip, are sick of this situation,” he said when asked if he had anything more to add. “We have had enough; they [Hamas] are stationed in the hospitals, stationed in the schools.”

The military said that troops operating inside the hospital and in the surrounding area located weapons, cash and documents belonging to Hamas. Some 20 gunmen were killed during fighting in the area surrounding the hospital, the IDF said.

Footage circulated by the Hamas-run Gaza health ministry claimed to show damage to several buildings after Israeli forces withdrew. The footage could not be independently verified.

Throughout its wider, ongoing operation in Jabalia and the surrounding area, the IDF said it has detained and killed hundreds of terror operatives. At the same time, it said that some 50,000 Palestinians have been evacuated from the area.

The raid on Jabalia began with the 162nd Division’s 401st and 460th armored brigades encircling the area’s refugee camp (historically named, with no relation to the current war), following intelligence that Hamas’s remaining forces in the northern Gaza Strip were largely concentrated there and working to regroup.

The IDF’s Givati Brigade later joined in the operation, and on Sunday, the 460th Brigade withdrew from the area. The operation, however, is still ongoing.

After encircling the camp, the army worked to clear civilians out and detain members of Hamas and other terror groups hiding among them. The goal was to prevent Hamas operatives from fleeing the area, and to force them to surrender or fight, IDF sources said.

Within 24 hours of the operation’s launch, the civilian population began to slowly evacuate, the sources said.

Hamas was surprised by the military’s quick push into the area, the IDF sources said, and hundreds of its members — including top commanders — were trapped.

Still, the evacuation of the civilian population took longer than the army initially expected, the sources said, as Hamas was allegedly holding them back. According to the sources, Hamas was physically preventing civilians from leaving shelters, including by shooting at the legs of some trying to flee.

Eventually, troops reached the shelters and called upon those inside to come out, which the sources said “broke the fear barrier” that the Palestinian civilians had.

Over 50,000 Palestinians passed through the army’s checkpoints, with those suspected of being terror operatives — mainly fighting-age males — being detained for questioning. In all, the IDF said that some 600 Palestinians it identified as terror operatives were arrested at its checkpoints during the evacuation of the civilian population from Jabalia.

Some claimed that IDF soldiers have targeted those trying to flee — a charge that the army denies.

The evacuated civilians have headed south, mostly to Gaza City — not south of the Netzarim Corridor where the Israeli-designated humanitarian zone is located.

Several hundred thousand civilians who are either unable or unwilling to evacuate are still believed to be in northern Gaza, despite repeated calls for them to relocate to designated safe zones elsewhere in the Strip.

The humanitarian situation in the north has caused alarm after no humanitarian aid entered for the first two weeks of the renewed IDF offensive. The US expressed concern that Israel was attempting to implement the so-called General’s Plan, aimed at evacuating civilians and then laying siege to northern Gaza, in order to flush out remaining Hamas fighters.

The IDF has denied that this is the case and has since allowed aid to enter the area, after the US warned it was risking the supply of some offensive weapons if it did not do so.

Ten Israeli soldiers, including the commander of the 401st Brigade, have been killed during the operation.

The IDF on Monday released new footage from the headcam of a soldier of the Bislamach Brigade, which was taken during the killing of Hamas leader and October 7 architect Yahya Sinwar earlier this month in southern Gaza’s Rafah.

The troops had engaged and killed four gunmen in Rafaj’s Tel Sultan neighborhood, one of whom was later revealed to be Sinwar.

The IDF also published an audio recording of the radio communications between commanders during the incident.

“Another dirty (terrorist) we eliminated him, we identified him with a blanket on him, he’s currently eliminated, over,” one officer could be heard saying in the recording.

“There might be more walking around between you, between the debris, but amazing work of the company, the battalion, and the sharpshooter,” another officer said.

The building that Sinwar was in was also shelled by tanks. It remains unclear if the marksman or the tank shelling dealt the killing blow.

The war in Gaza erupted with the October 7 terror onslaught carried out by Hamas in southern Israel last year, in which terrorists murdered some 1,200 people and seized 251 hostages, of whom 97 are believed to still be captive in Gaza.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 43,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.

Israel has said it seeks to minimize civilian fatalities and stresses that Hamas uses Gaza’s civilians as human shields, fighting from civilian areas including homes, hospitals, schools, and mosques.

Times of Israel staff and agencies contributed to this report.