Gaza, Israel | Israel confirms: Has withdrawn from the Shifa hospital in the Gaza Strip

The IDF reports that it has killed a number of Palestinian militants and seized weapons and documents. They describe the operation as very successful.

A number of Palestinians entered the hospital area on Monday morning. One of them, Mohammed Mahdi, describes above the news agency AP that the area is totally destroyed. He saw six dead.

According to a journalist, several of the buildings inside the hospital area have been destroyed, some of them by fire. Some dead are also said to have been crushed by vehicles.

– Buildings in all departments have fire damage and the hospital’s construction has been destroyed from the inside, says Al Jazeera’s reporter Ismail al-Ghoul to his own channel, adding that stairs, doors and the building’s walls have been destroyed.

al-Ghoul further says that the hospital is in ruins and that irreparable damage has been done to the hospital.

– From what we can see, the occupation forces seem to have purposefully attacked the health sector and destroyed the largest medical facility in the whole of Gaza City, says the reporter. Hamas itself denies that it has used hospitals as a base for its operations.

It has been two weeks since Israeli military forces stormed the hospital. At the time, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) stated that they had intelligence that Hamas was using the hospital as a base for their attacks.

Israel claimed last week to have killed 200 terrorists on the spot, while human rights activists called the fighting a direct attack on civilians.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that 21 patients have died in the hospital in the past two weeks.

It has also been reported by Palestinian media, citing witnesses and Hamas-backed health officials, that several dead bodies have been found near the hospital after the IDF withdrew. This information has not been verified.

– Dozens of corpses, some of them rotting, have been found in and around the Shifa hospital, state the health authorities.

Nearly 33,000 Palestinians are said to have been killed in Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip since 7 October. On Monday morning, the IDF announced that 600 Israeli soldiers have been killed since the war broke out.