Mass grave found at the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza: 49 bodies found

Hamas’ Health Ministry in the Gaza Strip and the government’s media office announced Wednesday that a mass grave had been found inside the Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City and 49 bodies had been withdrawn.

Mutasim Salah, a member of the Health Ministry’s Emergency Medical Committee in Gaza City, confirmed the bodies had been found.

Standing behind a group of bodies placed on the ground and wrapped in black and white nylon bags, Salah said, “The third mass grave was found inside this compound… Dozens of bodies were found inside The Shifa Medical Complex”.

Salah, who was wearing a mask, added, “Part of these bodies are decomposing corpses… Another part of it is for patients who were executed inside the complex… A third part is in pieces”.

“Medical teams were able to find a third mass grave inside the Shifa Medical Complex, from which 49 martyrs have been recovered so far,” the government media office said in a statement.

The government’s media office said its crews “haven’t finished their recovery operations, and we expect to find dozens of new bodies”.

“We condemn in the strongest terms the crimes of genocide and the continuous killing committed by the occupation army against our Palestinian people inside and outside hospitals, and we call on all UN and international organizations to condemn this heinous crime,” he added.

The Israeli military didn’t immediately comment on the information.

AFP footage showed flies on top of bodies lying among the rubble as bulldozers cleaned up a yard inside the compound.

According to the office’s statement, the number of mass graves found inside hospitals in the Gaza Strip has risen to seven in which 520 body have been found so far.

The Israeli military carried out a two-week limited operation at the Shifa Medical Complex.

The Shifa Medical Complex is the largest health institution in the Gaza Strip and is located in the Rimal neighborhood of Gaza City.

After the Israeli army withdrew from the compound, the World Health Organization said the hospital had been reduced to ashes.

Hamas said on Wednesday that the discovery of 7 mass graves in hospitals in the Gaza Strip requires the international community and the United Nations to take measures to stop the Israeli aggression on the Strip.

This came in a statement published by the movement on Telegram platform, commenting on the announcement by the Ministry of Health in Gaza, on Wednesday, the discovery of a third mass grave in The Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.

The movement said that “the announcement of the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip about the discovery of 7 mass graves inside the hospitals of the Gaza Strip, the latest of which is the announcement, Wednesday, of the discovery of a new mass grave in Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the third in the same hospital, is new evidence of the brutality committed by the criminal occupation army in its systematic aggression against our people and the medical sector”.

“The occupation aims to destroy the necessities of life in Gaza to achieve the plan of extermination and displacement it seeks,” Hamas said.

Hamas considered that the successive discovery of these mass graves in hospitals, from which medical teams recovered the 520 bodies, requires the international community and the United Nations to take all measures to stop this brutal aggression against our people, which exceeded the limits of human perception”.

Hamas called on “international human rights bodies and all concerned institutions to document these crimes and submit them to the International Criminal Court and other competent courts to hold accountable this rogue entity and its criminal leaders”.

With US support, the Israeli war on Gaza has left more than 113,000 dead and wounded, most of them children and women, and about 10,000 missing amid massive destruction and famine that has killed children and the elderly.

Israel continues the war despite a UN Security Council resolution to immediately cease hostilities, as well as despite the International Court of Justice demanding immediate measures to prevent genocide and improve the humanitarian situation in Gaza.