Gaza’s largest hospital reduced to an ‘empty shell’ littered with human graves, WHO says
- Israeli forces pulled out of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week military operation battling ‘militants’
- WHO staff who gained access to the facility found massive destruction and heard reports of patients ‘held in abysmal conditions’ during the siege
Israeli forces pulled out of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week military operation, during which it said it had battled Palestinian “militants” inside what was once the Palestinian territory’s most important medical complex.
A WHO-led mission finally accessed the hospital on Friday, after multiple failed attempts since March 25, the United Nations health agency said.
It found massive destruction and heard reports that patients had been “held in abysmal conditions” during the siege and several had died.
“WHO and partners managed to reach al-Shifa – once the backbone of the health system in Gaza, which is now an empty shell with human graves after the latest siege,” WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Saturday.