Israel’s military has pulled out of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City after a two-week raid that has left most of the major medical complex in ruins.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said dozens of bodies had been found and locals said nearby areas were razed.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said it had killed 200 “terrorists”, detained hundreds more 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 them of fighting inside medical departments, setting off explosives and burning hospital buildings.
Images published following the Israeli withdrawal showed Palestinians walking near the charred main buildings with chunks of wall missing and carrying bodies wrapped in blankets. Graphic photos showed corpses partially exposed on the churned ground.
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”.
A doctor told AFP news agency more than 20 bodies had been recovered, some crushed by withdrawing vehicles.
A spokesperson for Gaza’s Hamas-run civil emergency service said Israeli forces had used bulldozers to dig up the grounds of the complex and exhume buried bodies.
The Hamas government media office said Israeli forces had killed 400 Palestinians in al-Shifa and the surrounding area, including a female doctor and her son, who was also a doctor. Israel has not yet commented.
The IDF said its troops killed 200 “terrorists” and detained more than 900 people, of whom more than 500 were subsequently found to be affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad – which Israel, the UK and other countries proscribe as terrorist organisations. The suspects had been transferred to the intelligence services for further interrogation, it added.
The IDF said “forces found large quantities of weapons, intelligence documents throughout the hospital, encountered terrorists in close-quarters battles and engaged in combat while avoiding harm to the medical staff and patients”.
An IDF spokesman said more than 6,000 people had been in the hospital complex, mostly civilians, at the start of the raid.
The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Sunday night that 21 patients had died, with patients moved a number of times and held without medical care.
Dr Amira al-Safady at al-Shifa told the BBC’s Gaza Lifeline radio that about 16 people who were in the intensive care unit died after being moved, because she and other doctors no longer had the equipment to treat them.
Three days later, troops told medical staff to bury them outside, she said.
The IDF has been asked for comment. It says troops set up temporary infrastructure for medical treatment at al-Shifa, with video showing troops setting up a small number of beds.
