NABLUS, West Bank, 26 October 2003 — Masked Israeli troops raided two Palestinian hospitals yesterday, arresting two Palestinians — one of them in critical condition — in a commando-style operation the army said would be replicated in other hospitals where there might be suspects.

The troops, wearing black ski masks and carrying assault rifles, entered the Nablus hospitals before dawn yesterday, snatching one Palestinian from his hospital bed and finding a second hiding in a basement, a pistol in hand, the army said.

Human rights groups and Palestinians condemned the raids, fearing hospitals are no longer neutral ground in the ongoing fighting, and saying that international law bans military operations in medical facilities.

Including yesterday’s raids, the army has carried out four hospital raids in the last two months, and army officials said they planned to carry out more.

Troops pulled up in jeeps about 3 a.m. (0100 GMT) and swept into both hospitals, confining doctors and other staff to rooms for more than an hour as they kicked open doors in room-to-room searches, witnesses said.

Soldiers entered the intensive care unit of Anglican Hospital and grabbed Khaled Hamed from his bed. The 25-year-old Hamas fighter was badly injured Wednesday when explosives inside a car he was riding in went off accidentally.

Dr. Annan Abdel Hak said Hamed lost two fingers in the blast and suffered bleeding in his brain and light burns on his body.

“I explained to the soldiers how critical his condition is,” Hak said. “Then they removed the machines from his body.”

Hamed was taken in a military ambulance to Beilinson Hospital in central Israel and was in stable condition, a military source said.

Elsewhere in Nablus, troops stormed Rafidiyeh Hospital and arrested an armed member of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a group with links to Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction. The military said troops found the man, whom Palestinians identified as Jawad Ishtayeh, 27, hiding in the hospital’s cellar and armed with a pistol.

The army said the man was healthy, and Palestinian security sources said the man was not a patient and was apparently using the hospital as a hide-out.

A US peace activist witnessed the raid in Rafidiyeh Hospital, where he was recovering from light gunshot wounds to his leg he suffered during stone-throwing clashes Friday.

“Around 3 a.m. I was woken up with a flashlight shining in my face. I opened my eyes and had an M-16 pointed in my face,” said Mark Turner, 24, from Boulder, Colorado.

Masked soldiers stood at the foot of hospital beds for more than an hour, pointing guns at staff and patients and warning people to stay quiet, he said. Phone lines were cut and soldiers ordered some of the staff to lie on the ground, Turner said.

Palestinian Cabinet member Saeb Erekat called the raid a “grave measure.” “This is the most flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention when hospitals are not safe anymore from Israeli atrocities,” Erekat said.

Noam Hoffstater, a spokesman for the Israeli human rights group B’tselem, said the group was disturbed by the raid.