LONDON: Israeli claims about Hamas using hospitals in the Gaza Strip as bases of operation may have been “grossly exaggerated,” an International Criminal Court prosecutor has said.

Speaking at an event in The Hague, Andrew Cayley, the ICC lawyer leading the investigation into alleged war crimes and breaches of international humanitarian law in Gaza, said of the Israeli claims: “We need to be able to demonstrate very clearly what the level of military presence was, if at all, in these hospitals because I think we’ve been misled about that in the press.”

Israel regularly claimed that Hamas fighters were using hospitals as bases for cover and using patients and medics as human shields.

Cayley said the ICC was having “great difficulty assessing” the veracity of the claims “because clearly there are lies being spoken, but that’s really something we do need to get to the bottom of as a prosecution office.”

The former UK chief military prosecutor reports directly to Karim Khan, the ICC’s chief prosecutor, who last month secured arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and senior Hamas figure Mohammed Deif.

At the event, held to discuss attacks on healthcare in Palestine, Sudan and Ukraine, Cayley said damage caused to Gaza’s health infrastructure would be examined as part of the investigation into the war.

“Looking at damage to health facilities, destruction of health facilities, we’ll be coming on to that probably later next year. We’re having to do this in stages simply because of the resources that we have,” he added.

“Airstrikes, sieges, raids on hospitals. Add to that lack of fuel, electricity, food, medicine. That’s why the (healthcare) system has collapsed.”

He said he and his team had interviewed medical personnel who had worked in Gaza, and the ICC had seen “exceptionally good satellite imagery” that showed “on a daily basis how these (hospitals) are destroyed.”

Cayley added that his team are awaiting even better imagery to find evidence “showing either the truth or the falsehood of the usage of these facilities as military combat facilities.”

The World Health Organization said it had evaluated 35 hospitals in Gaza and determined that only 17 of them were even partly operational. Five others were labeled “fully damaged” and 13 “non-functional.”