2024-04-01 19:05:05
This content was published on 01 April 2024 – 21:05
By Dan Williams and Nidal Al-Mughrabi
JERUSALEM/CAIRO (Reuters) – The Israeli army said on Monday that its forces withdrew from the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza following a two-week operation, leaving behind widespread destruction around the hospital, destroyed buildings and scattered bodies.
There is a significant difference in the Israeli and Palestinian accounts in light of the severe restrictions imposed on access to the largest hospital in Gaza.
Palestinian officials described the raid on a hospital treating seriously wounded people as a war crime, while Israeli officials said that special forces units in the raid targeted a Hamas stronghold that they deliberately left among civilians vulnerable to danger.
Thousands of Palestinians, who the Israeli army says number 6,200, are sheltering in the complex, one of the few locations in northern Gaza that can get some electricity and water.
Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the government media office run by Hamas in Gaza, said that Israeli forces killed 400 Palestinians in the Shifa Hospital area, including a doctor and her son, who is also a doctor, and put the medical facility out of operation.
He added, “The occupation destroyed and burned all the buildings of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex, and bulldozed the squares. Dozens of the bodies of the martyrs were buried under the rubble, and the squares were turned into a mass grave.” He said this was a crime once morest humanity.
Hamas and medical teams deny that Palestinian militants have any presence in the hospitals, but Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hajari said that the Hamas and Islamic Jihad armed movements have turned the site into a major operations center.
He said that emergency patients were evacuated from the hospital before the operation, and that Israeli forces did not expose any Palestinian civilian, patient, or member of the medical staff to harm.
He added that three of the main buildings in the complex – the main emergency room, the maternity ward and the annex known as the Qatari Building – were destroyed in the fighting following Hamas fighters rejected calls to surrender.
He told reporters on Monday, “They use these places, and they know that they are a safe haven, and they know that they intend to use them as a command and control center.”
He said that 200 militants and two Israeli soldiers were killed during the operation, and that the forces arrested more than 900 suspected militants, including regarding 500 from Hamas or the Islamic Jihad movement, including senior leaders.
He said that documents found by Israeli forces showed that the hospital was used as a control base in the northern Gaza Strip, which has been largely destroyed since the start of the ground invasion in October.
He added that the army found money exceeding three million dollars, in addition to weapons and computers.
“It was a major operation in terms of the blow that Hamas and Islamic Jihad received,” he said.
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