This Monday, the Israeli army announced that it had “ended” operations in the Al Shifa hospital area, after two weeks.
“To the Troops concluded operational activity in the Shifa hospital zone and left the area“, the army declared in a statement, adding that “killed terrorists in clashes“.
Israel had previously claimed 200 Hamas militants were killed in fighting in and around Al Shifa. The army also released images of weapons and cash seized at the hospital that were used by Hamas and another militant group, Islamic Jihad. Hamas has denied operating from Al Shifa and other health facilities.
According to AFP, several witnesses revealed that dozens of airstrikes and projectiles hit the area around the Al Shifa complex, the main hospital in the Gaza Strip.
The territory’s Ministry of Health – controlled since 2007 by Hamas – indicated that “dozens of bodies of martyrs, some in a state of decomposition, were found in the complex and around the hospital“.
The Israeli military “withdrew from the Al Shifa medical complex after setting fire to the complex’s buildings and putting it completely out of service”, added the Palestinian Islamist movement.
“The scale of the destruction within the complex and the buildings surrounding it is very large.”
The Israeli army withdrew “after burning the complex’s buildings and putting it completely out of service”, lamented the Ministry. “The extent of the destruction within the complex and the buildings surrounding it is very significant.“, added the authorities.
According to a France Presse journalist and witnesses cited by the news agency, tanks and other Israeli army vehicles left the hospital complex this morning, which they had occupied two weeks ago.
O AFP journalist added that the Israeli army fired grenades to cover the withdrawal of tanks and left the Al-Rimal neighborhood to head southwest of Gaza city. A doctor told AFP that more than 20 bodies had been recovered, some of which were run over by retreating Israeli military vehicles.
On Sunday, the Gaza Ministry of Health revealed that 400 people died during the Israeli army’s two-week military operation at Al Shifa Hospital.
The Israeli army had been carrying out a military operation inside the hospital for two weeks, where it said it was “engaging in hand-to-hand combat” with Hamas fighters, in an operation that resulted in the death of around 200 suspected fighters and 800 suspects were interrogated, including of which 500 said they were members of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad movement in Palestine. Hamas and Islamic Jihad are considered terrorists by several countries, including Israel, the United States and the European Union.
With several thousand Gazans displaced by the war, hundreds sought refuge in the Al Shifa complex ahead of the Israeli operation.
Gaza authorities stated that inside the hospital there were 107 patients “in inhumane conditions, without water, medication, food or electricity”, including 30 disabled patients and around 60 health professionals.
Israeli airstrikes hit other areas of the Gaza Strip on Monday morning, while fighting took place in several critical points located throughout the territory. At least 60 people died in Gaza overnight, the Ministry of Health revealed.The war broke out in October when Hamas carried out unprecedented attacks against Israel, which resulted in around 1,160 deaths in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP balance of official Israeli data.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign killed at least 32,782 people, most of them women and children, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.
The Israeli military announced on Monday that 600 soldiers have been killed since the start of the war.
During the October 7 attacks, Palestinian militants also captured around 250 Israeli and foreign hostages. Israel believes that around 130 remain in Gaza, including 34 who are believed dead.
The Israel-Hamas war has devastated much of the Gaza Strip, including several health facilities, and sparked warnings of famine among the civilian population.
A March 25 UN Security Council resolution called for an “immediate ceasefire” and the release of all hostages held by militants, but the binding resolution failed to contain fighting, including in or around hospitals. .
The number one at the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated in a post on the social network X that an Israeli air strike on Sunday hit “a camp” inside the Al-Aqsa hospital complex, in central Gaza, causing the death of people and injuring 17.
Israel’s military denied that the hospital was damaged, adding in X that one of its planes “attacked an Islamic Jihad operational command center and terrorists positioned in the courtyard of Al-Aqsa Hospital in the Deir al Balah area.”
Tensions have risen between Israel and its main backer, the United States, due to the rising number of civilian deaths and especially due to Israeli threats to send ground forces into the populous city of Rafah, on the southern tip of Gaza.
w/ international agencies
