Israeli army says it has pulled out of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip – Technologist

Israeli forces on Monday, April 1, pulled out of Gaza’s largest hospital complex after an intensive two-week military operation, leaving behind charred buildings and bodies strewn at the sprawling complex.

Israel said it had battled Palestinian militants hiding inside Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, killed at least 200 enemy fighters and recovered large stockpiles of weapons, explosives and cash.

The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said that, after heavy Israeli air strikes and tank fire, “the scale of the destruction inside the complex and the buildings around it is very large.”

“Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been recovered from in and around the Al-Shifa medical complex,” the ministry said, adding that the hospital was now “completely out of service.” A doctor told Agence France-Presse (AFP) more than 20 new bodies had been recovered, some crushed by withdrawing vehicles.

Battles have also flared around other Gaza hospitals almost six months into the war sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attacks which have destroyed swathes of the besieged coastal territory. The Hamas government press office said the army had blown up more than 20 houses within 24 hours in the main southern city of Khan Yunis, where battles have raged around the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals.

Battle destroys hospital

Over the past two weeks, the Israeli army carried out what it labeled “precise operational activity” at the Al-Shifa complex, before declaring on Monday that the forces had withdrawn. The scene left behind was one of devastation, with windows blown out, concrete walls blackened and volunteers carrying away shrouded corpses across the sandy wasteland.

Dozens of air strikes and shelling had hit the area around the complex in the morning, in heavy fire which the Hamas government media office said served to provide cover for the withdrawing troops and tanks.

The army has in recent days released footage of its fighters moving through the hospital’s corridors, and pictures of large numbers of assault rifles, grenades and other weapons it said were recovered from the maternity ward.

The military has said 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were killed in fighting in and around Al-Shifa. Hamas has denied operating from Al-Shifa and other health facilities.

An Israeli strike also hit “a tent camp” inside central Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital compound, killing four people, said World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on social media platform X.

Israel’s military denied that the hospital was damaged, saying on X that an aircraft had “struck an operational Islamic Jihad command center and terrorists positioned in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Hospital.”