The World Health Organisation has condemned Israel for destroying Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital.
Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesman, said on Tuesday that the hospital complex was now completely destroyed.
“Destroying Al-Shifa means ripping the heart out of the health system of the enclave,” she said.
Israeli forces withdrew from Al-Shifa hospital, the largest in Gaza, early on Monday after a siege that lasted over two weeks, leaving scenes of devastation behind.
The IDF insisted that it had to lay siege to the hospital after hundreds of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad fighters regrouped there and used it as their base.
Out of 900 people detained in the raid, over 500 were identified as operatives of the two terrorist groups, the IDF claimed.
Israel released testimony of some of the detainees who described how they infiltrated Al-Shifa earlier this year, months after the IDF gained control of the north of Gaza.
Witnesses who arrived at the scene in the early hours on Monday saw main buildings of the compound badly damaged by fighting, pockmarked with shrapnel and charred by fire. Decomposed bodies were seen lying on the ground.
On Monday morning, residents were extracting bodies from the sprawling yard of the hospital that had been bulldozed over.
At least 21 patients have died inside the hospital since it came under siege on March 18. Dozens of patients have evacuated but over 100 including children and critical patients remained trapped inside.
“Though we cannot confirm the exact number of casualties, hundreds of people have been killed, including medical staff, and bodies are lying in the street, according to public reports,” Doctors without Borders said on Tuesday, adding that it was “horrified” that the hospital “is in ruins”.
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