ISRAELI forces executed many health workers and other civilians at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza during their two-week occupation which ended overnight yesterday morning.
Many departments were ‘set on fire’ and ‘many bodies’ are lying around the hospital, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), reported.
In a statement yesterday, Gaza’s Health Ministry said that dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, had been found at the complex after the Israeli pullout, which also left behind a vast swath of destruction.
It emphasised that Israel retreated from the hospital ‘after burning down the complex buildings and putting it completely out of service.
‘The scale of the destruction inside the complex and the buildings around it is very large,’ the ministry said.
The PRCS said: ‘The situation is dire, the medical staff, some of them were killed, others tortured, others detained, and above all, they have been besieged for two weeks without any medical supplies or even food or water.’
Civil defence teams were not allowed to put out the fires started at the hospital, which caused immense damage.
‘According to eyewitness accounts and official reports, many of the civilians were executed. They were killed by the Israeli occupation forces including medical staff, doctors and nurses, they were purposefully executed by the Israeli soldiers,’ the PRCS said.
‘We do not have final figures yet, but there is no doubt that it is confirmed that many were killed either directly by the Israeli occupation forces or starved to death.’
Israeli forces also destroyed the temporary cemetery that citizens had set up at the site, digging up the bodies and dumping them in different areas of the hospital.
Following the Israeli forces’ withdrawal from Al Shifa, Hamas said: ‘We hold the US administration and President Biden personally 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.
‘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.
‘We call on international judicial bodies, especially the International Criminal Court, to begin actual procedures to investigate the crimes and atrocities that occurred in Al-Shifa Medical Complex.’
• See editorial
