Israeli military forces have withdrawn from Gaza\u2019s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, after a 14-day siege that witnesses and Gazan authorities say left the medical facility largely destroyed. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe situation is very bad,\u201d said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for Gaza\u2019s Civil Defense, on Monday. Al-Shifa is \u201ccompletely destroyed and burned down. Many of its buildings are totally destroyed or charred,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cInjured and dead bodies fill the hospital grounds,\u201d he added. \u201cThere are bodies buried in the hospital yards.\u201d <\/p>\n
Images from the area showed widespread destruction with charred and pockmarked buildings inside the complex. <\/p>\n
More than 30 wounded people were transported from Al-Shifa to the Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital east of Gaza City, Bassal said. <\/p>\n
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed their withdrawal in a statement on Monday, saying they had completed \u201cprecise operational activity\u201d in the area. <\/p>\n
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said about 3,000 people were inside Al-Shifa when the IDF began its raid on March 18, and that those attempting to leave were being targeted by snipers and fire from helicopters. Hamas previously accused Israel of striking targets \u201cwithout regard\u201d to the patients or medical staff inside \u2013 a claim echoed by people at the complex. <\/p>\n
Targeting hospitals in wartime is\u00a0prohibited under international law, but those standards change if enemy combatants are using the facility to attack an enemy. <\/p>\n
The IDF said that during the raid, its troops \u201ckilled terrorists in close-quarters encounters, located numerous weapons and intelligence documents throughout the hospital, while preventing harm to civilians, patients, and medical teams.\u201d <\/p>\n
It has also said that civilians, patients, and medical teams were evacuated during the operation \u2014 though Palestinians inside and around Al-Shifa reported civilian casualties and arrests. Eyewitnesses have said medical personnel and other civilians were detained by Israeli troops. <\/p>\n
Israel\u00a0has for years said\u00a0that Hamas fighters are sheltering in mosques, hospitals and other civilian places to avoid Israeli attacks. Hamas has repeatedly denied the claims. <\/p>\n
\u201cBulldozers crushed bodies of people everywhere around and in the yard of the hospital,\u201d\u00a0said Al-Za\u2019anoun. <\/p>\n
After the withdrawal, people began arriving at the destroyed complex to search for missing family members, he said, adding: \u201cWe found entire families dead and their bodies are decomposed in houses around the hospital.\u201d <\/p>\n
Those still alive in the complex are malnourished, with some survivors saying they had to share one bottle of water among six people each day, Al-Za\u2019anoun said. <\/p>\n
This raid was the second of its kind at the hospital, with the IDF first raiding Al-Shifa in November. By January, the IDF\u00a0said\u00a0it had completed dismantling Hamas\u2019 command structure in northern Gaza. <\/p>\n
Israel\u2019s closest ally, the United States, has repeatedly\u00a0backed Israeli assessments\u00a0that Hamas and other Gaza militants used Al-Shifa\u2019s medical complex as a command hub, and to hold hostages and store weapons. <\/p>\n
Asked about the attack on Al-Shifa, US National Security Adviser\u00a0Jake Sullivan said on March 18 that \u201cHamas came back into Shifa\u201d after Israel had cleared the hospital of the militant group. <\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the siege has been condemned by international organizations, with World Health Organization (WHO) Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus\u00a0saying in March,\u00a0\u201cHospitals should never be battlegrounds.\u201d <\/p>\n
WHO and other humanitarian groups had been warning\u00a0of an ever-nearing famine\u00a0in northern Gaza. By late March, 70% of the population was suffering with\u00a0catastrophic levels of hunger, according to a UN-backed report. <\/p>\n
All 2.2 million people in Gaza do not have enough food to eat, with half of the population on the brink of starvation and famine projected to arrive in the north \u201canytime between mid-March and May 2024,\u201d according to the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC). <\/p>\n\n
Israeli military forces have withdrawn from Gaza\u2019s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, after a 14-day siege that witnesses and Gazan authorities say left the medical facility largely destroyed. \u201cThe situation is very bad,\u201d said Mahmoud Bassal, a spokesperson for Gaza\u2019s Civil Defense, on Monday. Al-Shifa is \u201ccompletely destroyed and burned down. Many of its buildings are totally <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17478,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17477","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17477","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17477"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17477\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}