Israel Defence Forces (IDF) have withdrawn from al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after a two-week operation, leaving the hospital in ruins.
The army launched the raid on Gaza’s largest hospital, in the northern Gaza City, on March 18, 2024, aimed at targeting Hamas fighters who were using the complex as a base.
“Troops have completed precise operational activity in the area of the Shifa Hospital and exited the area,” the Israeli military said.
Israel’s military described the raid as one of the most successful operations of its war in Gaza.
It claimed to have killed many Hamas fighters, including senior operatives.
A spokesman said that around 900 people suspected of being “militants” had been arrested, and weapons, valuable intelligence, and over $3 million in different currencies, seized.
The army also insisted that the raid on the hospital had been conducted “while preventing harm to civilians, patients and medical teams.”
According to a Palestinian news agency, hundreds of bodies of slain civilians were found at al-Shifa Medical Complex.
The news agency quoted sources as saying that Israeli forces destroyed the temporary cemetery that citizens had set up at the site, taking out the bodies from underground and dumping them in different areas of the hospital.
Nasser Kanaani, spokesman for Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated that the scenes from al-Shifa Hospital are “horrifying and shocking.”
“Will international organisations and institutions do their duty? Will the well-known claimants of human rights support the international investigation regarding the dimensions of this open war crime, or will the selective and discriminatory behavior … continue?” he said in a post on X.
In response to the Israeli forces’ withdrawal from al-Shifa Hospital, Hamas called on international judicial bodies, especially the International Criminal Court, to begin actual procedures to investigate the crimes and atrocities that occurred in the hospital.
The group held “the US administration and President Biden fully responsible for the crimes, massacres and systematic destruction of civilian life in the Gaza Strip.”
“This barbaric attack on the Gaza Strip once again confirms the reality of what the enemy seeks to push our people to emigrate from their land,” Hamas said.
“We call on the international community and the United Nations to condemn this terrible crime committed by the criminal Zionist enemy against the al-Shifa Medical Complex,” the group added.
Al-Shifa’s Legacy Tarnished
Norwegian physician, Dr Mads Gilbert, who has spent extensive time working in Gaza, including at al-Shifa hospital, opined that the siege of the facility has destroyed its legacy.
Speaking from Tromso, Norway, Gilbert told a news agency that the Israeli occupation forces “have ended 78 years of brave medical history.”
He disclosed that the hospital was built in 1946 and was the most important flagship hospital for the healthcare for people in Gaza.
“This is such a sad day, I’ve been weeping all morning,” he said.
Meanwhile, Gilbert noted that the fate of the 107 critical patients who were moved two days ago to an old part of the medical complex remains unknown.
It is said that people are now searching for corpses at the site, finding “the most horrible decomposed corpses with maggots coming out of the eyes.”
“The maggots that are creeping out of the corpses in al-Shifa Hospital now are really maggots coming out of the eyes of President Biden and the EU leaders doing nothing to stop this horrible, horrible genocide,” the physician said.
READ ALSO: Ghana’s Power Sector Woes Persists Despite ECG’s Sufficient Power Capacity Claim
