The Jewish state launched a major operation against the largest establishment in the Palestinian enclave on March 18, with the aim of finding fighters who were hiding there.
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It’s the end of a two-week operation in Gaza’s largest hospital. The Israeli army announced that it had withdrawn from the al-Chifa complex on Monday April 1, confirming statements from Hamas and observations from witnesses on site. Israel claimed on Thursday to have “eliminated around 200 terrorists in the hospital area”stormed on March 18 to hunt down leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement accused of having hidden there.
An AFP journalist saw tanks and vehicles withdrawing from the area, under the cover of artillery fire and airstrikes, leaving behind a landscape of devastation, with destroyed, charred or flattened buildings and streets littered with rubble and mounds of sand.
Hamas reports “dozens of bodies” discovered
“Dozens of bodies of martyrs, some in a state of decomposition, were found in and around the al-Chifa hospital”, said the Health Ministry of Hamas, in power in Gaza since 2007. A doctor told AFP that more than 20 corpses had been found. According to him, some of the bodies were run over by military vehicles during their withdrawal.
On Sunday, the director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, reported 21 dead patients since the start of the Israeli operation in al-Chifa, where hundreds of displaced people had found refuge. According to him, there are 107 patients left in this hospital, including four children and 28 patients in critical condition. The Israeli army had already carried out a similar operation in al-Chifa in November, accusing Hamas of using the hospital as a command center. What the Palestinian movement denies.
The WHO chief also said that a “camp within the al-Aqsa hospital compound was hit by an Israeli airstrike”, Sunday, in Deir al-Balah, leaving four dead. The Israeli army admitted to having targeted “a terrorist operational command center” in the court.