Gaza Civil Defense reported that health workers found at least 50 bodies of people killed and buried by Israeli forces in a hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis. The Israeli military said it was verifying the reports.
In a statement to AFP, the civil protection agency said the remains were found in the courtyard of the Nasser Medical Complex. “There are mass graves at the Nasser Medical Complex, dug up by the Israeli occupation… we were shocked by the presence of the bodies of 50 martyrs in one of the pits yesterday,” Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the civil protection agency, told AFP. “Today, we are continuing the search operation and waiting for all the graves to be exhumed to give a final count of the martyrs. He claimed that some of those killed were tortured. “There were no clothes on some of the bodies, which certainly shows that (the victims) were tortured and abused,” Bassal said.
Intense fighting took place in mid-February in the area of the hospital, and Israeli tanks and armored vehicles surrounded it on March 26.
In a separate statement on Sunday “Hamas” condemned what he said was a “mass grave of those executed in cold blood and buried with military bulldozers in the hospital yard”. More than 50 bodies were found there. Several of the bodies, wrapped in white blankets, were later collected by relatives, said an AFP photographer who reported that civil defense officials were seen exhuming bodies from the yard on Sunday.
The hospitals in Gaza were not spared in the Israeli attack, with the military accusing Hamas of using the facilities as command centers and holding hostages taken in the October 7 attack. The World Health Organization (WHO) said on April 6 that the largest hospital in the Palestinian territory, al-Shifa in Gaza City, was reduced to ashes by an Israeli siege last month, leaving an “empty shell” containing many bodies. WHO staff who were given access to the devastated facility described horrific scenes of bodies only partially buried, limbs sticking out and the smell of decomposition.
Israel launched a military operation against Hamas militants in Gaza after the group’s fighters carried out an attack on southern Israeli areas on October 7. The unprecedented attack left 1,170 people dead, Israelis and foreigners, according to AFP figures based on official Israeli figures. About 250 people were kidnapped in Gaza during the attack, of whom 129 remain captive, including 34 who the Israeli military says are dead. Israel’s retaliatory offensive has so far killed mostly 34,097 people in Gaza.
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