GAZA, (PIC)
The Israeli occupation forces (IOF) withdrew at dawn Monday from Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital and its neighboring area after a two-week raid and siege, leaving behind hundreds of bodies and a trail of destruction.
The Israeli forces, tanks and vehicles reportedly headed south towards one of their encampments in the area between the neighborhoods of Ajlin and Tal al-Hawa.
A reporter for Al Jazeera satellite channel said that the IOF withdrawal from the area was sudden and happened in the midst of shooting and projectile attacks on residential buildings and homes in the vicinity of Al-Shifa Hospital.
Scenes from Al Jazeera showed multiple charred bodies of martyrs lying on roads near Al-Shifa Hospital, while medical sources reported that bodies of hundreds of martyrs were found in the facility and nearby streets following the IOF withdrawal from the area.
The medical sources added that the hospital is now completely out of service after the IOF destroyed and burned the hospital’s buildings, describing the scale of destruction in the medical compound and the buildings around it as “enormous.”
Hundreds of Palestinians flocked to the hospital after the Israeli army pulled out its troops from the area. A number of citizens embarked on helping patients, displaced families and medical workers who were trapped inside, to leave the facility.
Video footage circulating online showed heavily damaged and charred buildings in and around the medical compound, mounds of dirt that had been churned up by bulldozers, and patients on stretchers in darkened corridors in one of the hospital’s building.
During its siege of the hospital, the Israeli army prevented representatives of international organizations from reaching the hospital and the area around it to evacuate patients and civilians, while its forces persisted in committing different forms of war crimes and causing a catastrophic humanitarian and health suffering among the Palestinians inside and around the facility.
