A US official with knowledge of American intelligence says Hamas has a command node under the Al-Shifa hospital, uses fuel intended for the hospital and its fighters regularly cluster in and around Al-Shifa.
Hamas and hospital officials have denied the command center accusation.
The US official's information comes after comments made Sunday by a top White House official that the hospital, which is the largest one in Gaza, was being used not just to treat civilians.
“You can see even from open-source reporting that Hamas does use hospitals, along with a lot of other civilian facilities, for command-and-control, for storing weapons, for housing its fighters,” National Security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union. “Without getting into this specific hospital or that specific claim, this is Hamas' track record, both historically and in this conflict."
US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Monday that Hamas has headquarters in civilian areas.
"(T)here's an added burden here on Israel because of the way Hamas is fighting, headquartered in hospitals and schools and digging tunnels under residential buildings and apartments," he told Fox News in an interview. "I mean, that's what Hamas does. They don't abide by any law of war, and they're deliberately putting the people of Gaza at greater risk by how they are conducting themselves."
Kirby said the US administration is talking to Israel about how "to minimize civilian casualties, particularly when we're talking about a hospital with a pediatric unit and young babies premature that they have no – have no voice, have no stake in this and just want to survive." He pledged the administration would "keep working with them about how to do this in a way that, again, goes after the leadership and protects civilian life to the maximum extent possible."
Israel has insisted it is justified in taking military action around the hospital, despite criticism from the UN and others. The Israeli government announced it has created evacuation corridors and called for the removal of civilians, in addition to providing fuel.
"There's no reason why we just can't take the patients out of there, instead of letting Hamas use it as a command center for terrorism, for the rockets that they fire against Israel, for the terror tunnels that they use to kill Israeli civilians," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview on CNN's State of the Union.
Netanyahu added that Israel is "treading carefully when it comes to hospitals. But we're also not going to give immunity to the terrorists."
The CIA declined to comment.