On Monday, day 178 of the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip, Israeli troops finally withdrew from Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa Hospital, after occupying the hospital for 14 days. The first scenes revealed from the hospital in the wake of Israel’s two-week long takeover shows that the soldiers turned the hospital into what eyewitnesses say was a “slaughterhouse”. Hundreds of dead bodies, many of them half-decomposing and with severed limbs, are strewn all across the hospital grounds and in different rooms and departments of the hospital.
Also Monday, Al-Jazeera reported that two Palestinians were killed and others were injured as a result of an Israeli shelling that targeted a car in Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.
The Israeli army announced that a soldier from the 77th Battalion was killed during the fighting in the southern Gaza Strip.
In the case of al-Shifa Hospiral, Israeli forces had entered the hospital for a second time, claiming it was “Hamas headquarters”, but found no evidence that this was the case. To the contrary, the hospital was a twenty-four hour trauma injury treatment facility, with new patients coming in following each Israeli bombardment.
Scene from inside Shifa Hospital
Palestinians trying to evacuate wounded from al-Shifa Hospital
Dr. Yousef Abu Al-Rish shared this statement on the conditions inside the hospital prior to the Israeli military withdrawal from the location on Monday morning:
“107 patients ,most of them are severe cases that had been in the ICU, and 60 of the medical staff have been incarcerated in an old building in the hospital that does not have the capacity to host such number of patients nor the equipment they need. The situation as reported by many of the staff is horrific and inhumane; no ventilation, cleaning conditions, water, nor minimum medication has been provided leading to septic wounds with white flies out of them. Doctors mentioned that they ran out of gloves so they started using plastic bags when changing on wounds which ran out as well. In addition, they reported the lack of elderly diapers, adding that 30 patients are bed ridden and use diapers and in intensive need of medical care and nursing that the limited number of staff is incapable of providing.
“Furthermore, patients’ companions are either executed, arrested or displaced to the south by the military which add another burden on the staff. Moreover, the military is starving the besieged patients and staff with no food or drinkable water provided for days. The staff representative tried multiple times to convey their needs to the military leadership, however; he was met by violation and mistreatment. Prior to every negotiation attempt, soldiers would undress him and leave him nearly naked for 3 hours at least before meeting the officer. After relating the needs of the many patients and civilians starving inside the besieged hospital, the military officers would respond, “We will look into the matter and come back to you”, but they never did. In light of these horrific conditions, our already exhausted medical staff started showing symptoms of fatigue, and if no solution is pursued as soon as possible, the place will turn into a graveyard of patients and staff if it is not already the case.”
According to witnesses, the Israeli withdrawal revealed that the occupying forces burned all the buildings of Shifa Hospital and were completely out of service.
Medical sources said that the army completely destroyed floors in the specialized surgery building, and burned the rest of the building. The soldiers also burned the main reception and emergency building, destroying dozens of rooms and all medical equipment, as well as burning the kidney dialysis center and the maternity ward. They band childbirth buildings, funeral refrigerators, cancer and burns, and destroying the outpatient building.
Hundreds of bodies were found in all parts of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex and in the streets of Omar Al-Mukhtar, Izz al-Din al-Qassam, Abu Hasira, Bakr and Haboush, all surrounding the hospital.
The army destroyed the makeshift cemetery that had been set up by citizens at the Shifa Medical Complex, removed the bodies of the deceased from the cemetery and dumped them in different areas of the hospital, she said.
According to the witnesses, the Israeli occupation forces burned or destroyed many houses and residential buildings in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, which includes thousands of housing units.
The civil defense teams in Gaza said that the Israeli occupation destroyed all sections, buildings and infrastructure in the Shifa complex, and it is difficult to count the number of dead, especially as the Israeli soldiers bulldozed roads and buried bodies inside and around the complex, and bulldozed all the cemeteries surrounding the complex and removed the bodies from the ground.
One thing that was revealed when journalists finally entered was that the occupying forces had executed handcuffed citizens.
Fourteen days ago, the Israeli occupation forces raided Al-Shifa Medical Complex and surrounding areas and carried out a large-scale military operation there, resulting in dozens of Palestinians killed, and hundreds of injuries and abductions.
This is the second time that the Israeli occupation forces have raided the hospital since the beginning of the aggression on the Gaza Strip on 7 October 2023, as they stormed it on 16 November last year after a week-long siege, during which its yards, parts of its buildings, medical equipment and a generator were destroyed.
