Jerusalem, Apr 1 (EFE).- The Israeli military withdrew early Monday from Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital after a two-week raid during which they claimed to have killed around 200 alleged Palestinian militants and arrested around 500.
“The IDF and Shin Bet forces completed the operation this morning in the area of Shifa Hospital,” the Israel Defense Forces said in a statement on Monday.
Palestinian eyewitnesses had earlier confirmed to EFE the withdrawal of troops from the hospital – the largest in Gaza – at around 4:30 am.
During its operations at the hospital, which began two weeks ago with the siege of the medical facility, Israel claims to have eliminated some 200 “terrorists” and interrogated more than 800 suspects, among whom it identified some 500 members of Hamas and Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian militant group, including senior commanders.
The statement said that the Israeli troops killed terrorists in close-quarters encounters, located numerous weapons and intelligence documents throughout the hospital, while preventing harm to civilians, patients, and medical teams.
Palestinian sources say that the withdrawal of troops was carried out amid intense aerial and sniper fire, in addition to widespread destruction in the surrounding area, where several buildings were burned during the Israeli operation.
This was Israel’s fourth incursion against one of the few partially operational hospitals in the north of the Strip, alleging the presence of militants inside the complex, according to its intelligence information.
That was the same reason the Israeli troops gave in November when they carried out their first raid at the hospital that left it non-operational for months.
Though Israel says that the military operations have not been directed against patients, health personnel or medical equipment, on Sunday, Gaza’s health ministry, controlled by Hamas, denounced that the incursion had left at least 400 dead in the area, where more than 1,000 houses have been destroyed.
At least 107 patients, most of them in critical condition, and 60 medical staff members were transferred to an old hospital building without the capacity to accommodate them and without the necessary medical equipment.
Medical sources said that the patients had no access to basic necessities such as water, electricity and medicine.
The hospital’s doctors said that the Israeli forces were starving patients and the staff without providing them with food or drinking water for days and warned that the companions of many patients had been executed, arrested or displaced to the south by the troops.
On Sunday, non-profit Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor called for a “comprehensive and impartial international investigation into the serious violations committed by the occupation army against the Palestinians and their properties in the Gaza Strip,” after documenting “looting operations of money and properties including valuable items from the Palestinians and their homes when they were forcibly displaced from them or when their homes were burned and destroyed by the occupation forces.” EFE
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