CNN
—
Health workers in northern Gaza exhumed the first corpses from mass graves in and around Al-Shifa Hospital on Tuesday, after they said Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinians and left their bodies to decompose during their two-week siege of the complex.
At least 381 bodies were recovered from the vicinity of the complex since Israeli forces withdrew on April 1, Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said on Tuesday, adding that the total figure did not include people buried within the grounds of the hospital.
Many of the decomposed remnants they discovered had been buried or were found above ground, officials told CNN on Monday. Israeli tanks crushed others to death, leaving some of those killed completely disfigured and unable to be identified, Basal said.
Witnesses and civilians who were trapped inside the hospital when it was raided say the vicinity “was full of bodies,” according to Basal. “The occupation forces have plowed these bodies and buried them in the ground,” he added.
“We are here to recover the remains of the bodies who are in the sand mounds that the Israeli occupation have plowed in a big pile,” Ahmad Alaiwa, a doctor at Al-Shifa, told CNN.
Some of the bodies were found lying under dirt or plastic sheeting, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X on Tuesday. “Hospitals should never be militarized,” he said in a video message.
It came as staff from the World Health Organization and the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reached Al-Shifa Hospital earlier this month, according to a UN report. Israeli authorities had repeatedly denied humanitarian teams access to the complex, the UN said.
“Shifa has literally become a graveyard… There are bodies still in this courtyard,” Jonathan Whittall, a senior humanitarian affairs officer for OCHA, said in a video message posted on X, on Saturday.
AFP/Getty Images
A United Nations (UN) team inspects the grounds of Al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, which was reduced to rubble by a two-week Israeli raid, on April 8, 2024.
…
This article was originally published by a amp.cnn.com . Read the Original article here. .