GAZA STRIP (Palestinian Territories) – Israeli soldiers pulled out of the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital complex on April 1 after an intensive two-week military operation, leaving behind charred buildings and bodies strewn at the sprawling complex.

Israel said it battled Palestinian militants from Hamas hiding inside Gaza City’s Al-Shifa hospital, killed at least 200 of them and recovered large stockpiles of weapons, explosives and cash.

The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said that, after heavy Israeli air strikes and tank fire, “the scale of the destruction inside the complex and the buildings around it is very large”.

“Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been recovered from in and around the Al-Shifa medical complex,” the ministry said, adding that the hospital was now “completely out of service”.

A doctor said more than 20 bodies had been recovered, and that some were crushed by withdrawing vehicles.

Battles have also flared around other Gaza hospitals almost six months into the war sparked by Hamas’ Oct 7 attack that have destroyed swathes of the besieged coastal territory.

The Hamas government press office said the army blew up more than 20 houses within 24 hours in the main southern city of Khan Younis, where battles have raged around the Nasser and Al-Amal hospitals.

American, Qatari and Egyptian mediators have long pushed for a ceasefire and hostage release deal, but Hamas official Osama Hamdan said “there is no talk so far about any new round of negotiations”.

United Nations agencies and humanitarian aid groups have warned that many among Gaza’s population of 2.4 million are on the brink of famine, and donor countries have sporadically trucked in and airdropped food.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – who underwent a successful hernia operation on March 31 – has vowed to destroy Hamas, including in Gaza’s far-southern city of Rafah.

The premier was “in good shape and beginning to recover”, his office said in a statement.

Mr Netanyahu is under rising pressure from the families and supporters of hostages taken by Hamas, as well as anti-government protesters, whose nightly street rallies have gathered pace and drawn many thousands onto the streets.

Thousands of people took to the streets of Jerusalem for a second consecutive night on March 31, calling for greater efforts to free the hostages held in Gaza and the ousting of Mr Netanyahu.

Demonstrators blocked a main city highway after earlier rallying in front of the Israeli Parliament, lighting fires and waving Israeli flags.

The bloodiest ever Gaza war erupted when Hamas launched its unprecedented Oct 7 attack, which resulted in the deaths of about 1,160 in Israel, mostly civilians, according to a tally of Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed at least 32,782 people, mostly women and children, according to the Gaza health ministry.

Deadly air strikes pounded other areas of Gaza early on April 1, while fighting raged in several flashpoints located across the territory.

At least 60 people died in Gaza during the night, the health ministry said.

The Israeli military on April 1 announced that 600 Israeli soldiers had been killed since the start of the war.

Palestinian militants also seized around 250 Israeli and foreign hostages. Israel believes about 130 hostages remain in Gaza, including 34 who are presumed dead.

Hamas leader’s sister arrested

Israeli police, meanwhile, said they arrested the sister of Qatar-based Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, as part of a terror probe, in the southern Israel town of Tel Sheva.

Ms Sabah Abdel Salam Haniyeh, 57, who is an Israeli citizen, was taken into custody as part of an investigation also involving Israel’s security agency, Shin Bet.

A police spokesman said she is “suspected of having contact with Hamas operatives and identifying with the organisation, while inciting and supporting acts of terrorism in Israel”.

Over the past two weeks, the Israeli army carried out what it labelled “precise operational activity” at the Al-Shifa complex, before declaring on April 1 that its forces had withdrawn.

The scene left behind was one of devastation, with windows blown out, concrete walls blackened and volunteers carrying away shrouded corpses across the sandy wasteland.

A spokesman for Gaza’s Civil Emergency Service said Israeli forces executed two people whose bodies were found at the complex in handcuffs, and used bulldozers to dig up the grounds of the complex and exhume buried bodies.

Reuters could not verify the allegation of executions, and Israel’s military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Footage circulated on social media and not yet verified by Reuters showed the bodies of Palestinians, some covered in dirty blankets, scattered on the ground around the charred hulk of the hospital building, many of whose outer walls were missing.

Dozens of air strikes and shelling had hit the area around the complex in the morning, in heavy fire which the Hamas government media office said served to provide cover for the withdrawing troops and tanks.

The army has, in recent days, released footage of its fighters moving through the hospital’s corridors, and pictures of large numbers of assault rifles, grenades and other weapons it said were recovered from the maternity ward.

The military has said 200 Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants were killed in fighting in and around Al-Shifa.

Hamas has denied operating from Al-Shifa and other health facilities.

An Israeli strike also hit “a tent camp” inside central Gaza’s Al-Aqsa hospital compound, killing four people, said World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on social media platform X.

Israel’s military denied that the hospital was damaged, saying on X that an aircraft had “struck an operational Islamic Jihad command centre and terrorists positioned in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa hospital”.

The Israel-Hamas war has devastated much of Gaza, including several health facilities, and sparked warnings of famine among the civilian population.

A UN Security Council resolution on March 25 demanded an “immediate ceasefire” and the release of all hostages held by militants, but the binding resolution has failed to curb the fighting, including in or around hospitals.

Tensions have risen between Israel and its closest ally, the United States over the spiralling civilian death toll, and especially over Israeli threats to send ground forces into Rafah.

Around 1.4 million people who fled their homes elsewhere in Gaza have sought shelter in Rafah, the only part of the territory Israeli troops have yet to enter.

Washington has nonetheless approved billions of dollars worth of bombs and fighter jets for Israel in recent days, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed officials.

Meanwhile, in a bid to help alleviate the suffering of Gaza’s 2.4 million people, an aid ship was sailing from the Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus to bring 400 tonnes of food, as part of a small flotilla.

Foreign powers have ramped up aid airdrops, although United Nations agencies and charities warn that this falls far short of the dire need and say trucks are the most efficient way of delivering aid. AFP, REUTERS