By Yolande Knell & Sean Seddon, BBC News
By Yolande Knell & Sean Seddon, Israel’s military says it has pulled out of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after a two-week raid that left most of the major medical complex in ruins.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said dozens of bodies have been found and locals said nearby areas were razed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said troops had killed and detained hundreds of “terrorists” and found weapons and intelligence “throughout the hospital”.
The IDF said it raided al-Shifa because Hamas had regrouped there.
The two-week operation saw intense fighting and Israeli air strikes in nearby buildings and the surrounding area.
Wards were attacked because Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad operatives were using them as a base, the IDF said, accusing Hamas fighters of fighting inside medical departments, setting off explosives and burning hospital buildings.
Photos showed that al-Shifa’s main surgery building, which housed the intensive care unit, and the neighbouring building where the emergency, general surgery and orthopaedics departments were located had been destroyed.
Dozens of bodies, some decomposed, had been found in and around the medical complex which was now “completely out of service”, the health ministry said.
A doctor told AFP news agency more than 20 bodies had been recovered, some crushed by withdrawing vehicles.
On Sunday Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization (WHO), said 21 patients had died since al-Shifa “came under siege”. Patients had been moved multiple times and more than 100 had been held in an “inadequate building” in the compound lacking support and medical care, he said.
Patient Barra al-Shawish told Reuters news agency that the Israeli troops had allowed in a “very small amount of food”. “No treatment, no medicine, nothing and bombing for 24 hours that didn’t stop and immense destruction in the hospital,” he said.
Some of the patients were being moved to the al-Ahli hospital, a medic at al-Shifa told Reuters.
The IDF statement said troops had “completed precise operational activity in the area of al-Shifa hospital and exited the area of the hospital”. During the raid the IDF was “preventing harm to civilians, patients, and medical teams”, it added.
On Sunday evening, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said al-Shifa had become “a terrorist lair” and that more than 200 members of Palestinian armed groups, including senior figures, had been killed, with others surrendering.
Some 900 people were detained in and around al-Shifa, Israel says, with more than 500 of them subsequently found to be members of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
Two weeks ago, it took hundreds of Israeli forces just a few hours to approach and enter the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital. That was in marked contrast to their first controversial raid there in November, when it took several weeks for large numbers of tanks and vehicles backed by heavy air strikes to close in on the site.
For supporters of the Israeli military this has been evidence of the gains it has made during the war and its tactical success, launching a surprise attack on the enemy to strike it hard. An IDF spokesman previously referred to the operation as “one of the most successful of the war so far” because of the intelligence gleaned as well as numbers killed and detained.
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However, some commentators suggest the second al-Shifa raid highlights flaws in Israel’s military strategy for the war. They argue that it shows the ease with which Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters were able to regroup after Israel pulled its forces out of northern Gaza and the urgent need to come up with a convincing post-war plan to govern the territory.
Gaza’s hospitals have been a main focus of the current war, with thousands of Palestinians seeking shelter from Israeli bombardment in their grounds and Israeli forces storming the facilities because they say Hamas fighters are present there.
Israel has long accused Hamas of using civilian health infrastructure as a cover to launch its operations, which the Palestinian group denies.
On Monday the Gaza health ministry appealed for international help to restart medical care at Nasser hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. The biggest hospital in southern Gaza has been out of action since the Israeli military stormed it in February.
The war began when Hamas fighters stormed into southern Israel on 7 October, killing about 1,200 people and seizing 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies. About 130 of the hostages remain in captivity, at least 34 of whom are presumed dead.