Ginebra. The World Health Organization (WHO) stated this Saturday that the last Israeli military operation in the main hospital in the Gaza Strip reduced it to ashes and that the siege left “an empty shell” with many bodies.
A WHO delegation visited the facilities on Friday and described a heartbreaking panorama. The UN agency reported that there were partially buried bodies, with exposed limbs and a persistent smell of putrefaction.
The Israeli army withdrew on Monday from Al Shifa hospital, located in Gaza City, after a two-week operation that, according to the armed force, had the objective of searching for “fighters” of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas within the facilities.
The hospital is the most important in the Palestinian territory, governed by Hamas since 2007.
The WHO mission described widespread destruction and heard reports that patients were held in “appalling” conditions, and that several died during the siege.
“WHO and its partners managed to reach Al Shifa, which was the backbone of the health system in Gaza and is now an empty shell with human graves after the last siege,” WHO director Tedros Adhanom wrote in X Ghebreyesus.
The WHO reported in a statement that there are no patients left in the hospital, where there are “numerous shallow graves” dug outside the emergency department and the surgery and administration buildings.
“Many bodies were partially buried, with limbs exposed,” said the WHO, which reported that its staff saw “at least five bodies lying partially covered on the ground, exposed to the heat.”
“The team reported that there is a penetrating smell of decomposing bodies that surrounds the hospital premises,” added the organization, which highlighted that safeguarding “dignity, even in death, is an indispensable act of humanity.”
The mission was carried out in collaboration with other UN agencies and with the acting director of the hospital.
The delegation confirmed that “the magnitude of the devastation” left the facilities inoperative.
“Most of the buildings in the hospital complex are badly destroyed and most of the equipment damaged or reduced to ashes,” Tedros said.
The conflict erupted due to the attack by commandos of the Palestinian Islamist movement in southern Israel on October 7, in which they killed 1,170 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
They also captured more than 250 people, of whom 129 are still held in Gaza, including 34 who have died, according to Israeli authorities.
The air and ground offensive launched by Israel in retaliation has already left at least 33,137 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Ministry of Health of the Hamas government in Gaza.
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– 2024-04-14 15:29:19
