Gaza City, March 25 (RHC)-- Eyewitnesses to Israel’s week-long raid on the al-Shifa Hospital and its vicinity in Gaza City say they saw the regime’s armored vehicles running over bodies and ambulances at the medical complex.
Jameel al-Ayoubi, who was sheltering at the hospital during the attack, said tanks and armored bulldozers plowed into the hospital courtyard, crushing ambulances and civilian vehicles. He also saw tanks running over at least four bodies of the Palestinian people killed during the assault.
Abed Radwan, who lived near the al-Shifa Hospital, said Israeli forces detained several people and forced the rest to march to the south. “They left nothing intact,” he further said, adding that bodies of the victims were scattered in the streets and homes were flattened in the aftermath of the Israeli raid.
Another witness Kareem Ayman Hathat said some men were forced to strip to their underwear while the rest were blindfolded and ordered to follow a tank south as blasts thundered around them. “From time to time, the tank would fire a shell,” he told The Associated Press. “It was to terrorize us.”
On Saturday, a Palestinian woman also recounted terrifying incidents after Israeli military forces raided al-Shifa Hospital, saying the occupying regime’s soldiers were raping Palestinian women before killing them.
Jamila Al-Hisi, an eyewitness who was besieged in the medical complex and managed to finally get out, said that women have been subjected to rape, starvation, torture, and extrajudicial execution.
Last Monday, heavily armed Israeli forces stormed the al-Shifa Hospital and fired at thousands of patients, and medical staff, and displaced thousands of civilians inside the medical facility. The Israeli military claimed that “senior Hamas terrorists” were using the facility to “conduct and promote terrorist activity.” Later that day, Israel said that “terrorist forces” were firing at Israeli troops.
The Ministry of Health in Gaza said at the time that about 3,000 people were inside al-Shifa seeking refuge and that those attempting to leave were being targeted by snipers and fire from helicopters.
The deadly raid has been going on for a week now, with the occupation troops laying siege on the hospital and targeting those trying to flee.
So far, the Israeli soldiers have killed more than 170 Palestinians in and around the hospital and arrested a total of 800 others, including journalists and health workers.
In November 2023, the Israeli military conducted a similar bloody raid on the medical center, claiming that Hamas used it as a command center, sparking widespread international condemnation. Hamas officials have rejected such claims on several occasions.
Israel began waging a genocidal U.S.-backed war on the Gaza Strip last October after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out its historic operation against the usurping entity in retaliation for the regime’s intensified atrocities against the Palestinian people.
So far, the Tel Aviv regime has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 74,518 others.
