What We Found in the Wake of the Israeli Raid: NPR

DUBAI AND GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip – For two weeks starting in March, Israeli commandos surrounded what was once the largest and most advanced Shifa Medical Complex in the Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said the target was militants who had regrouped there, using its buildings for shelter and internet access. She said that Hamas hid behind the sick and wounded, and insisted that no civilians were killed in the raid. Israeli statements described it as a precise process and a model for Future military action in Gaza.

Early on Monday, April 1, Israeli forces withdrew under cover of darkness, ending the siege. That's when the Palestinians caught the first glimpses of its effects.

Photos and survivor testimonies collected by NPR in Gaza City reveal a battle that destroyed nearly every corner of the Shifa neighborhood, as well as the surrounding neighborhoods and homes — which are now piles of twisted metal, rubble and the ashes of a smoldering fire.

The bodies were decomposing in the hospital's dirt courtyard, which was filled with waste Unexploded Ordnance. Other people were shot and left to die in the building's corridors, mutilated and crushed by tanks outside its gates, and decomposed in side streets and in buildings.

So far, there is no clear death toll and no clarity on how many of the dead may be civilians or suspected combatants.

One woman's screams pierced the courtyard as the bodies were newly discovered Monday.

“That's enough already! God is enough!” cried.

Satellite images taken by Maxar Technologies show before and after the war damage to Al-Shifa Hospital and the surrounding streets.

Israel praises the operation as a model

Israel says the operation targeted Hamas, the group that launched a deadly attack on Israel on October 7, sparking the war. Associated Press Reports Hamas published videos of gunmen preparing shells that it said were directed at Israeli forces in the hospital complex.

In two separate visits to Shifa during the raid, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevy praised the forces and the operation, saying part of its goal was to pressure negotiations with Hamas for a temporary ceasefire.

Israel said that its forces found many weapons inside the hospital during the raid, and killed and arrested hundreds of activists.

Israeli government spokesman Avi Heyman said, “We entered there with surgical force and special operations and eliminated more than 200 terrorists. We arrested more than 900 terrorists without any civilian casualties.”

He added that the raid would be studied at major military academies such as West Point in the United States and Sandhurst in the United Kingdom as “the gold standard for urban warfare.”

Palestinians challenge the Israeli version of events

The acting head of Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Marwan Abu Saada, said that three of his colleagues were martyred during the siege, without providing details about the circumstances.

Speaking to reporters outside the destroyed medical complex in the hospital courtyard alongside other Palestinian doctors wearing white coats, hours after Israeli forces ended their siege, Abu Saada said that among the dead were the chief engineer of the maintenance department, the head of the pharmaceutical department and the restoration team. The surgeon was killed along with his mother.

He added that he and other hospital workers buried all the bodies on Monday.

He also mentioned the names of seven doctors who were arrested by Israeli forces during the raid or who remain detained since a previous raid in November, including several intensive care doctors and general surgeons.

The World Health Organization says 21 patients died in hospital during the recent 14-day Israeli siege, and more than 100 patients are trapped without enough food or water. In miserable conditions. Seriously injured children endured the strike alone, without their parents or caregivers, according to the World Health Organization.

The visibly emaciated patients were carried on stretchers after the raid ended and transferred to other smaller, partially functioning hospitals in northern Gaza.

Imad Jibril, one of the patients trapped inside Al-Shifa Hospital, told NPR that they were forced to move to different rooms in the hospital by Israeli forces, and were detained in rooms without windows or ventilation at times.

“I spent about eight days without changing the bandage on my leg,” Gabriel said. “We got infected twice. The doctors and nurses couldn’t take care of us because they said they didn’t have gloves or gauze.”

Devastation is all around healing as people cry over lost lives and homes

The raid did not focus only on the hospital, but also on the streets surrounding it, where fierce battles took place. Photos taken by NPR show entire buildings reduced to rubble.

In the early hours of March 18, when Israeli forces overran the Al-Shifa neighborhood with heavy gunfire and tanks, nearby residents said other Israeli forces bombed houses door-to-door, throwing stun grenades into homes while gathering people for questioning.

Nariman Qanita told NPR that she woke up startled by the sound of heavy gunfire and shelling a few hours after the end of the evening prayer during the month of Ramadan. She said that Israeli forces entered the building where she lived as if they were fighting armed men, and did not enter the homes of families with children.

“When they raided the building and entered the building, there were children sleeping in their room – two children aged 12 and 13. They shouted, 'Papa, papa (papa, papa),” she said. “We saw one bleeding, injured in his organs, not by bullets. He had a hole of at least 20 cm.” [8 inches] in it.”

It is unclear how the boy was injured. The Israeli forces used stun grenades when bombing the doors, and used artillery, air strikes, and gunfire extensively during their operation, according to residents.

She said the boy continued to bleed for hours until Israeli forces allowed him to exit the building, but not before the boy's mother had to watch him bleed heavily for some time. Qanita doesn't know if he survived.

Hours later, Israeli forces ordered the women and children to follow a strict evacuation route. She added that they were not allowed to take anything with them, neither their phones nor their ID cards. The men were stripped to their underwear.

Other Palestinians told NPR similar stories. Qanita returned to her home when the siege ended. It has turned into rubble.

“There are no suitable homes to live in. Where do we go, people?” She said. “While you are preparing Eid clothes and Eid cakes, we are preparing the shrouds and how to remove the dead from under our homes. This is enough already,” she said, describing the Muslims' festive holiday after the approaching month of Ramadan.

Journalist Bayan Abu Sultan lives near Al-Shifa Hospital. I posted early Instagram shows some of the moments in which she survived the raid, including praying over the body of her brother and another person wrapped in white shrouds. It did not mention how he died, but only that he was killed by Israeli forces.

In another scene, she shows people she describes as her neighbors wounded and bleeding and have nowhere to go for treatment. It also shows a fire in an apartment in the building next to hers. Several houses were burned in western Gaza City during the raid.

NPR was unable to immediately reach Abu Sultan to obtain further details about what she experienced and the circumstances of her brother's death.

Complete collapse of the largest hospital in Gaza

This raid was the second major attack on Shifa since the war began nearly six months ago, and it was the most decisive.

Abu Saada, acting head of Al-Shifa Medical Complex, told reporters that Al-Shifa Medical Complex was out of service forever.

He said that the hospital had a capacity of about 800 beds. More than a quarter of a million people are taken to emergency rooms annually. The hospital used to perform more than 17,000 surgeries annually.

He said it was a beacon in Gaza, a place where outstanding medical students trained, where visiting doctors performed surgeries and assisted in past conflicts, and where journalists flocked to report on casualties and human toll in the wars with Israel.

Abu Saada said that the hospital is no longer able to receive patients. He added that there is no place to perform surgeries, laboratory tests, or dialysis, because everything was destroyed or burned. He called for the immediate establishment of a field hospital in Gaza City.

Of the 36 hospitals across the Gaza Strip, only about 12 are partially operational due to the war and Israeli raids. These hospitals lack adequate supplies such as basic anesthesia, bed space and equipment.

The World Health Organization said this week that its multiple requests to Israeli authorities to facilitate a visit to Al-Shifa Hospital to speak with staff and find out what can be salvaged in the wake of the raid have so far been rejected or blocked.

Omar Al-Kattaa reported from Gaza City. Aya Al-Batrawi reports from Dubai. Anas Baba contributed to this story from Rafah, Gaza Strip.