Claims of the presence of Hamas fighters in hospitals in Gaza, which is under siege by the Israeli army, have been "grossly exaggerated", the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said.
Andrew Keighley, who heads the ICC's investigation into Palestine, has questioned the reliability of claims of military activity in Gaza hospitals, which have been used to justify Israeli attacks on health facilities in the area, the Guardian reports.
Speaking at an event last Sunday, Cayley provided a rare insight into the ICC prosecutor's office's investigation into war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Israeli forces and Palestinian militants.
Cayley, who reports directly to the ICC's chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, is overseeing the investigation, which was launched in 2021 but accelerated after the October 7 attack by Hamas and Israel's subsequent bombing of Gaza.
Last month, Khan issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Galant and Hamas military leader Muhammad Deif as part of the investigation. Israel claims Deif was killed in an airstrike in July, but the court could not determine whether he was alive or dead.
The charges against the three suspects are only one part of the investigation. Kelly's team continues to investigate a series of alleged crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.
ICC prosecutors are understood to have investigated incidents in which hospitals were damaged or destroyed during the Israeli military offensive in Gaza.
According to the latest data from the World Health Organization (WHO), of the 35 hospitals in Gaza that were assessed, only 17 were characterized as "partially functional". Five are "completely damaged", while 13 are "non-functional".
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has repeatedly justified operations against medical facilities in Gaza by claiming they are being used by Hamas militants.
Cayley said the ICC has "great difficulty in assessing" the level of presence of Hamas militants in hospitals because "obviously there are lies being told, but that's something we really need to clear up as the prosecutor's office."
"I think it's grossly exaggerated, but we need to clearly show what the level of military presence was, if any, in those hospitals, because I think we were misled in the media about that," he added.
The prosecutor indicated that Israeli operations against medical facilities in Gaza would be investigated. "By studying the damage to health facilities, the destruction of those facilities, we will deal with that issue probably next year. We have to conduct this investigation in phases due to limited resources," he added.
Cayley, a British barrister and former chief military prosecutor of the United Kingdom, made the remarks at an event in The Hague on attacks on health facilities in Sudan, Ukraine and Palestine, held on the sidelines of the annual conference of member states of the ICC.
He said the health system in Gaza is now barely functioning. "Air strikes, sieges, raids on hospitals. Add to that the lack of fuel, electricity, food and medicine. That's why the system collapsed," the prosecutor explained.
Hospitals, as well as medical infrastructure and personnel, have special protection under international humanitarian law. Attacks on them are prohibited, except in certain circumstances when medical facilities lose their protected status if they are used for combat activities.
Asked about Keighley's comments, an IDF (Israeli army) spokesman said they were acting in accordance with legal obligations and were trying to "minimize harm as much as possible" in operations involving medical facilities.
In the Israeli military that Hamas is "systematically abusing the protection of medical facilities for its own nefarious purposes" and installing tunnels, infrastructure and weapons depots inside such facilities.
"The IDF has repeatedly encountered the presence of Hamas in medical facilities, despite numerous opportunities for Hamas to distance itself once and for all from such locations," they added.
Speaking last Sunday, Keighley said his team had spoken to medical staff who had returned from working in the area.
Cayley said the ICC has access to "extremely good satellite imagery" that "shows [hospitals] being destroyed on a daily basis," but said investigators were looking for accurate images that would "demonstrate the truth or falsity of claims that these facilities are being used as combat sites." .
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