Gaza Genocideupdated 2h ago3 min read
Archive photo · 23 February 2025Israel Withdraws From Gaza’s Al-Shifa After Two-Week Raid, Leaving Facility In Ruins
3 Western Mainstream2 Other2 West Asian1 AsianPhoto: Jaber Jehad Badwan, CC BY-SA 4.0 · Cropped for layout
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Israel withdrew from al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after a two-week raid. Large portions of the facility were destroyed, including surgery, maternity, and emergency wards.
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Shifa raid ends
Israel withdrew from Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital after a two-week raid that left large parts of the facility destroyed in fighting with Hamas gunmen barricaded inside, including the surgery, maternity and emergency wards. WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Sunday evening that some 21patients had died during the fighting, and he said around 107 patients trapped in the compound had been moved multiple times while lacking adequate food, medicines and access to clean water and sanitation for basic hygiene and wound care.
Israeli forces withdrew from al-Shifa after a two-week raid that left most of the major medical complex in ruins, while Hamas claims from the Gaza side said the Israel Defense Forces killed 400 people in the compound. The IDF Spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said the IDF had taken "special efforts not to harm any patients, any medical staff, or any civilians in the area."
Competing death claims
Hamas-run health ministry accounts and Palestinian security sources described mass death and destruction after the withdrawal, with the BBC reporting that the health ministry said dozens of bodies, some decomposed, had been found in and around the medical complex, which was now "completely out of service". The Hamas-run health ministry described the scale of the destruction inside the complex as “very large,” and it quoted the health ministry saying, “Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been recovered from in and around the Al-Shifa medical complex,”.
The IDF said its forces had “conducted precise operational activity” at al-Shifa, apprehended about 500 people and “eliminated hundreds of terrorists,” while it said the operation was based on “precise intelligence” and that it found large quantities of weapons and intelligence documents throughout the hospital. The BBC reported that Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said the IDF had evacuated more than 200 of the estimated 300 to 350 patients and delivered food, water and medical supplies to the rest, while it also quoted Dr Amira al-Safady telling the BBC’s Gaza Lifeline radio that about 16 people in the intensive care unit died after being moved because doctors no longer had the equipment to treat them.
Aid, missions, and fallout
The United Nations planned to send a mission to al-Shifa Hospital after the Israeli army pulled out, and UN spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said, "We plan to send a mission to the hospital as soon as we can access there to help people receive medical care and to assess the hospital’s condition."
“The ongoing attacks and militarisation of hospitals must stop.”
Dujarric said WHO was awaiting de-confliction and security assurances from the Israeli government, while he added that WHO staff were trying to go there as quickly as possible and that information they had was fairly bleak.
The Health Policy Watch account said the hospital’s few remaining patients were being moved to Al Ahli Hospital about two kilometres to the south-east, and it said over 6,000 people had been sheltering on the hospital grounds when Israel first entered the compound.
Tedros said Al-Aqsa Hospital had been hit Sunday by an Israeli airstrike while a WHO team was on a needs assessment mission there, and Tedros said, “We again call for protection of patients, health personnel and humanitarian missions. The ongoing attacks and militarisation of hospitals must stop.”
