Scenario of “total destruction” at Al-Shifa hospital after the Israeli army announces the end of operations there

Israeli forces announced on Monday the withdrawal from Al-Shifa Hospital, in the city of Gaza, after an operation that lasted two weeks and left a trail of destroyed buildings and bodies of Palestinians scattered among the rubble.

Hundreds of residents flocked to the area around the largest hospital in the Gaza Strip to see the damage caused to the surrounding residential neighborhoods following fighting between Israel and Hamas, writes Reuters.

“I haven’t stopped crying since I arrived here, horrible massacres were committed by the occupation,” Samir Basel told the news agency, through a chat application. “The place is destroyed, the buildings were burned and destroyed. This place needs to be rebuilt, there is no longer any Al-Shifa hospital,” added Basel, 43 years old.

Another resident, Mohammed Mahdi, described to the Associated Press a scene of “total destruction” in the vicinity of the hospital unit, where he found at least six bodies. Yahia Abu Auf also says that “the situation is indescribable”. “The occupation destroyed the whole meaning of life here”, he lamented, quoted by “The Guardian”.

Israeli forces say they killed and detained hundreds of armed men in clashes in the hospital area, in addition to seizing weapons and documents from the secret services. Hamas and medical personnel deny that Palestinian fighters have any armed presence in hospitals.

A spokesman for the Gaza Civil Emergency Service said Israeli forces executed two people whose bodies were found handcuffed in the compound and that they used tractors to excavate the compound’s grounds and exhume buried bodies. Reuters was unable to verify the claim of executions and said it had not obtained any comment from the Israeli military.

Images circulating on social media show bodies of dead Palestinians, some covered with dirty blankets, scattered on the ground around the charred hospital building. Numerous buildings in the immediate vicinity of the facilities were razed or burned down.

Before Israel’s first statement about the military operation at the hospital in the enclave, the Ministry of Health of the Gaza Strip, controlled by Hamas, indicated that the Israeli army had removed the tanks from the complex leaving destruction and “dozens of bodies of martyrs , some in a state of decomposition”.

Israel guarantees that operations inside Al-Shifa were conducted “avoiding harm to civilians, patients and medical teams” and has not yet communicated further details about the “end” of this army operation.

Gaza’s Health Ministry reported on Sunday that 400 people died during the two-week operation. The Israeli army said it was “engaging in hand-to-hand combat” with Hamas fighters, in an operation that resulted in the deaths of around 200 alleged combatants.