April 1, 2024 (EIRNS)—Israel Defense Forces (IDF) left the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City today after two weeks of a brutal military operation, leaving behind vast destruction and 300 dead bodies on site, according to Hamas’s rescue services, reported Haaretz today. The daily cited Mahmoud Bassel, a member of Gaza’s Civil Defense rescue service, who told CNN that the situation at the hospital was “dire.” It was “completely destroyed and burned, and many of its buildings were demolished.”
According to the World Health Organization, 21 hospital patients have died since March 18. The Palestinian Red Crescent Society told Al Jazeera that departments of the hospital were “set on fire” and bodies of “executed” civilians were lying around the complex. The IDF claimed to have apprehended 500 people affiliated with terrorist organizations and “eliminated” 200. The hospital, IDF charged, was being used by terrorists as a command and control center and a military headquarters. They claimed to have found large quantities of weapons and intelligence documents.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari insisted that there were “very important Hamas officials” among those arrested. Lt. Gen. Herzl Halevi, Israeli Army Chief of Staff, boasted that the IDF operation achieved its goals “at a very high level,” but that every effort was made not to harm patients or medical staff—which contradicts the conditions found in the hospital after the IDF departed. At the State Department briefing today, spokesman Matthew Miller, after being questioned insistently about what the IDF did at Al Shifa Hospital, complained that no one ever asked him questions about why Hamas always hid in hospitals or used people as human shields.
