The bodies and the truth are starting to emerge in the wake of the two Israeli airstrikes at the Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
On Tuesday, health workers exhumed the first corpses from mass graves in and around Al-Shifa Hospital. They claim that Israeli forces killed hundreds of Palestinians and left their bodies to decompose during their two-week siege of the complex.
Gaza Civil Defense spokesperson Mahmoud Basal said on Tuesday that thus far, at least 381 bodies were recovered from the area since Israeli forces withdrew on April 1. He added that the total figure did not include people buried within the grounds of the hospital itself.
Basal described a horrifying scene to CNN of decomposed remnants either hastily buried or even still lying on the surface. Even more distressing, Israeli tanks had crushed others to death, leaving some of those killed completely disfigured and unable to be identified, Basal said.
Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical complex in Gaza, was placed under siege by Israel in mid-November 2023 during the war that started on October 7. Israel justified the highly criticized action of attacking a hospital, which is a violation of international law, by saying it housed a Hamas command and control center beneath it. The incident was followed by a second major raid by Israeli forces in March 2024, leading to extensive damage and casualties.
Israel’s claims to have found a Hamas operational center within the hospital’s premises were met with skepticism and accusations of evidence fabrication by various media outlets and experts. The World Health Organization expressed extreme concern for the patients and staff, having lost contact during the siege.
The hospital’s administration and Hamas denied the allegations of military use of the facility, inviting international security experts to verify the claims.
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.
The operation to recover the bodies came after 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.
In response to a CNN request for comment, the Israel Defense Forces continues to justify the actions at Al Shifa Hospital, stating that together with the ISA (Israel Security Agency) it had “completed operations against terrorist operatives and infrastructure” at Al-Shifa, and that “approximately 500 suspects affiliated with terrorist organizations were apprehended and 200 terrorists were eliminated.”
“The forces found large quantities of weapons, intelligence documents throughout the hospital, encountered terrorists in close-quarters battles and engaged in combat while avoiding harm to the medical staff and patients.”
On the same day as the discovery of the mass graves, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin held a press conference where he announced, “We don’t have any evidence of genocide being [committed]” by Israel in Gaza.
Despite a global outcry against Israel’s disproportionate strikes against Gaza, and widespread anti-Netanyahu protests within Israel, the U.S. continues to support Netanyahu and his war policies–albeit with repeated warnings to do more to protect civilian lives in the conflict; warnings that the Prime Minister ignores.
Israeli attacks on Gaza have killed at least 33,360 Palestinians, and injured another 75,993 people, according to the Ministry of Health in the enclave.
“The smell of the dead is all over the place,” Motasem Salah, an official from the Ministry of Health in Gaza leading recovery efforts, told CNN.
But Salah has a different view from that of Lloyd Austin: “The world is witnessing the first genocide shown in real time to the world by its victims and unfathomably justified by Israel as compliant with the laws of war,” the statement added. “The extent of the atrocity is still unable to be fully documented due to its scale and gravity – and clearly represents the most horrific assault on Gaza’s hospitals.”
