Israeli army says it ended military operation at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza

GAZA CITY, Palestine

The Israeli army said Monday that it wrapped up its military operation at the Al-Shifa Hospital complex in Gaza City, following a 14-day siege and incursion that resulted in scores of casualties and hundreds of arrests.

A military statement said that the army and the General Security Service (Shin Bet) ended the operation in the hospital, and the forces withdrew from it.

It also said that a soldier was killed in the operation.

Earlier, eyewitnesses told Anadolu the army withdrew from inside the Al-Shifa Hospital and the surrounding areas west of Gaza City, leaving scores of casualties and extensive destruction in the hospital and its vicinity.

Israeli forces also burned the buildings of the kidney and maternity wards, mortuary refrigerators, and cancer and burn facilities, and destroyed the outpatient clinic building, according to the witnesses.

According to Palestinian medical sources, the hospital is now completely out of service and the army destroyed all medical equipment in the complex, operation rooms, and intensive care units.

The witnesses also reported that scores of scattered bodies were found in the hospital and in the streets surrounding it.

Meanwhile, the army said it continued incursion into the central and southern areas of the Gaza Strip.

“In central Gaza, an attack helicopter carried out a strike on a building used by Hamas and another building that was booby-trapped and had been used by Hamas operatives to observe troops,” Times of Israel quoted a military statement.

“Troops of the Commando Brigade and Givati Brigade are continuing to battle Hamas in the al-Amal neighborhood,” it added.

The Israeli army raided the hospital, the largest medical facility in the Gaza Strip that houses thousands of patients and displaced people, on March 18.

Israel has waged a deadly military offensive on the Gaza Strip since an Oct. 7 cross-border attack by Hamas which killed some 1,200 people.

Nearly 32,800 Palestinians have since been killed and 75,300 others injured amid mass destruction and shortages of necessities. Israel has imposed a crippling blockade on the Gaza Strip, leaving its population, particularly residents of northern Gaza, on the verge of starvation.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), which on Thursday asked Israel to do more to prevent famine in Gaza.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio