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RAFA, Gaza Strip (AP) — Palestinians fleeing the ongoing Israeli offensive in and around the Gaza Strip’s main hospital described in interviews Sunday days of heavy fighting, mass arrests, forced marches past bodies and leveled buildings. .
The Israeli military says it has killed more than 170 militants and detained about 480 suspects in a raid on Shifa hospital that began last Monday, portraying it as a heavy blow to Hamas and other armed groups. who he says have been reintegrated into the medical complex.
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 turn back after launching a similar raid in November.
Karim Ayman Hathat, who lives with his parents and two brothers in a five-story building about 100 meters (yards) from the hospital, said he huddled in the kitchen for days while the sounds of gunfire and explosions echoed outside. Due to which sometimes the whole building would shake. ,
Early Saturday, Israeli soldiers stormed the building and forced him and dozens of other residents to leave. He says the men were forced to remove their underwear and four were detained. The rest were blindfolded and ordered to follow a tank southward as more explosions occurred all around them.
“From time to time, the tank would fire a shell,” he told The Associated Press in an interview from another hospital in central Gaza, where he has sought shelter. “It was meant to terrorize us.”
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Major General Yaron Finkelman, head of Israel’s Southern Command, said the Shifa raid had been a “bold, complex and most effective operation to date”, capturing “hundreds” of militants and yielding valuable intelligence.
“We will end this operation only when the last terrorist is in our hands – alive or dead,” he said in a statement issued by the army on Saturday.
Shifa Hospital had largely stopped functioning after the raid in November. After claiming that Hamas maintained an elaborate command center for Israeli forces inside and below the hospital a single tunnel exposed Leading to some underground rooms. He also said that they had found weapons in some parts of the hospital.
Gaza city, where Shifa is located, suffered widespread destruction in the early days of the Israeli attack The Hamas attack on October 7 that sparked 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 this last week Famine is imminent in northern GazaWhere more than 210,000 people are suffering from terrible hunger.
Jamil al-Ayoubi, who was among the thousands seeking shelter in Shifa when the raids began last Monday, said in a phone interview that tanks and armored bulldozers had entered the courtyard of the vast medical complex, destroying ambulances and civilian vehicles. Were crushed. He said he saw tanks moving over the bodies of at least four people killed at the beginning of the attack.
The Health Ministry said that five wounded Palestinians trapped in Shifa died without food, water or medical services. The director-general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, described conditions there as “completely inhumane.”
The army said on Saturday that it had evacuated patients and medical staff from Shifa’s emergency department as militants “infiltrated” the building. The army said it had set up an alternative site where seriously injured patients were being cared for.
Abed Radwan, who lives about 200 meters (yards) from the hospital, said Israeli forces stormed all the buildings in the area, detained many people and forced others to march south. Gave. As he walked south with others, he saw bodies in the streets and many collapsed houses.
“They left nothing intact,” he said in an interview from a relative’s home in central Gaza.
Now in its sixth month, the war between Israel and Hamas has killed at least 32,226 Palestinians. Gaza Ministry of Health, It does not distinguish between civilians and combatants among its dead but says about two-thirds of the dead were women and children.
Israel says it has killed more than 13,000 terrorists without providing evidence. It blames Hamas for causing civilian casualties and accuses it of using schools, hospitals and residential areas to shield its fighters.
More than 80% of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million have fled their homes, with the majority seeking refuge. in the southernmost city of Rafa, which Israel says will be the next target of its ground attack. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has rejected calls from the United States And others called for avoiding launching a major ground campaign there, saying it is necessary to defeat Hamas.
The war began when Hamas-led militants stormed the border on October 7 and rampaged across southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking many hostages. Hamas still holds an estimated 100 hostages and the remains of 30 others, after most were freed in exchange for the release of Palestinian prisoners in November.
The United States, Qatar and Egypt are trying to broker another ceasefire and the release of the hostages, but weeks of indirect talks between Israel and Hamas have failed to reach an agreement.
Magee reported from Cairo.
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