The Hamas government in the Gaza Strip announced on Wednesday that 49 bodies had been excavated from a new mass grave discovered at al-Chifa Hospital, the main hospital complex in the Palestinian territory.
“A third mass grave was found inside the Chifa hospital complex,” the Hamas government press service said. “So far 49 bodies (in) have been extracted. »
In front of the ruins of the hospital ravaged by the fighting between the Israeli army and Hamas, an AFP journalist was able to see around ten body bags, at the feet of rescuers from the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip, ruled by Hamas since 2007. “Some bodies are decomposed,” said Motassem Salah, an official in the hospital’s emergency department.
Targets of military operations
At the end of April, the Palestinian authorities indicated that around thirty bodies had been extracted from two mass graves at al-Chifa hospital, the scene of two weeks of Israeli military operations between mid-March and early April.
Hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been harshly targeted since the start of Israel’s military operation in the Palestinian territory, following the bloody attack in southern Israel on October 7 by Hamas fighters from Gaza. .
The Israeli army accuses Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes, which the Palestinian movement denies. The World Health Organization (WHO) indicated in April that the al-Chifa hospital was nothing more than an “empty shell” littered with human remains.
So far 520 bodies have been extracted from “seven mass graves” unearthed in three different hospitals in the Gaza Strip since April.
