Two weeks after the IDF’s surprise raid on Shifa Hospital in Gaza, a.k.a. Hamas central headquarters, and after the elimination of senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists and the arrests of hundreds of rank-and-file terrorists, the IDF has withdrawn from the largest so-called hospital in the Gaza Strip. An IDF spokesman on Monday morning confirmed Arab media reports that showed hundreds of Gaza Arabs near the destroyed and burned buildings.
A military official told Army Radio on Monday that Shifa Hospital was severely damaged after it became a battlefield: “It will no longer be a hospital,” the official said.
انتهاء معركة مستشفى الشفاء بالقضاء على 200 من دواعش حماس
والقاء القبض على 500 آخرين من بينهم قادة كبار . pic.twitter.com/kH3iGfCRpc— Hoda_jannat (@hodajannat) April 1, 2024
In photos and videos circulated on Arab social media, the hospital can be seen destroyed and its floors toppled in the fighting. According to the IDF, more than 6,000 were evacuated from the compound, more than 900 were arrested for questioning, more than 500 were identified as terrorists and arrested, and more than 200 were eliminated.
That’s 14,400 virgins by my count.
⭕️قوات جيش الدفاع وجهاز الأمن العام استكملت هذا الصباح العملية في منطقة مستشفى الشفاء. حيث غادرت قوات وحدة 13 للكوماندوز البحري، ومجموعة القتال التابعة للواء 401 والوحدة الخاصة التابعة للواء الناحال بقيادة الفرقة 162 منطقة المستشفى.
⭕️في وسط القطاع أغارت مروحية قتالية على مبنى… pic.twitter.com/Ch3v7WPhKW
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) April 1, 2024
According to medical officials who spoke to Al Jazeera, the buildings of the former medical complex were “burnt out of use.” They also said that the scope of the destruction in the compound and surrounding buildings is enormous, and claimed that hundreds of bodies are found inside the compound, in the streets, and on the surrounding roads west of Gaza City.
The IDF is convinced that Hamas and the Islamic Jihad did not think Israel would retake Shifa, and based on that faulty conceptzia started to run business as usual in the compound. The IDF also believes that the hospital administration knew about the activities of the terror organizations there, and therefore many Shifa management personnel were arrested.
IDF Chief of Staff Hertzi Halevi visited Shifa last Friday, and said the operation there “achieved its goal at a very high level.” He emphasized that the IDF did everything it could “not to harm the patients, and not to harm the medical staff,” and said not one medical staff member was injured in the operation.
Hours before the IDF’s withdrawal, the Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, called on Israel to open a humanitarian corridor to the complex and facilitate access to it urgently, so that his organization and its partners can evacuate and rescue patients.
Ghebreyesus pointed out that 21 patients had died since the start of the Shifa operation on March 18. He said that 107 patients were housed in an inappropriate building in the complex without medical care and supplies. 28 patients were in critical condition, and there were no diapers or urine bags.
Ghebreyesus added that since Saturday, there has been only one bottle of water left for every 15 people, and infectious diseases have spread due to unsanitary conditions and water shortages.
Ghebreyesus failed to disclose that he was citing from Hamas statements which he did not bother to verify with the IDF. Also, he did not mention that the reason so many patients were in duress was that terrorists were running around the hospital corridors and shooting at IDF medics who were attempting to help those patients.
