Rafah, March 24: Palestinians who fled during an ongoing Israeli raid in and around the Gaza Strip’s main hospital described days of heavy fighting, mass arrests, forced marches past dead bodies and flattened buildings in interviews Sunday.
The Israeli military says it has killed over 170 militants and detained some 480 suspects in the raid on Shifa Hospital that began last Monday, portraying it as a heavy blow to Hamas and other armed groups that it says had regrouped in the medical compound.
But the heavy fighting has also highlighted the resilience of Palestinian armed groups in an isolated and heavily destroyed part of Gaza where troops have been forced to return after launching a similar raid back in November.
Kareem Ayman Hathat, who lived with his parents and two brothers in a five-story building about 100 metres from the hospital, said they huddled in the kitchen for days while gunfire and explosions echoed outside, sometimes causing the whole building to shake.
Early on Saturday, Israeli troops stormed the building and forced them and dozens of other residents to leave. He says the men were forced to strip to their underwear and four were detained. The rest were blindfolded and ordered to follow a tank south, as more blasts thundered around them.
The head of Israel’s southern command, Maj. Gen. Yaron Finkelman, said the Shifa raid had been a “daring, tricky and most impressive operation so far,” with “hundreds” of militants apprehend and the acquisition of valuable intelligence.
Shifa Hospital had largely stopped functioning following the raid in November. After claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command centre inside and beneath the hospital, Israeli forces exposed a single tunnel leading to a few underground rooms. They also said they found weapons in parts of the hospital.
Gaza City, where Shifa is located, suffered widespread devastation in the early days of Israel’s offensive, launched after the October 7 Hamas attack that triggered the war. Israeli forces have isolated the city and the rest of northern Gaza since November, and hardly any aid has been delivered in recent weeks. Experts said last week that famine is imminent in northern Gaza, where over 210,000 people are suffering from catastrophic hunger. (AP)
