For two weeks, Israeli forces and tanks besieged the al-Shifa Hospital compound in Gaza, where thousands of Palestinian civilians were taking shelter and receiving medical treatment. Advancing under relentless bombardment, Israeli forces carried out horrific acts of mass slaughter.

After two weeks of carnage, Israeli military forces and tanks withdrew from the besieged hospital compound on Monday. Over four hundred bodies have been uncovered so far, half of them children and women. Hundreds lay wounded with grotesque deformities; many others remain missing.

The hospital lay in ruins, with the main buildings reduced to burned-out husks. The Israeli army bombed and burned all buildings, including the mortuary, courtyards, and corridors. Residents described scenes of “total destruction” at the site, saying Israeli troops had “destroyed all sense of life” there. According to Ismail al-Thawabta, director of Gaza’s media office, “The occupation destroyed and burned all buildings inside al-Shifa medical complex. They bulldozed the courtyards, burying dozens of bodies of martyrs in the rubble, turning the place into a mass graveyard.”