The courtyard outside the main entrance to al-Shifa, Gaza City’s largest hospital, had been churned up into dust and transformed into parking for Israeli armoured vehicles.
On the last day of a two-week Israeli operation against Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) members holed up in the hospital, two of the main buildings stood burnt out as fighting went on elsewhere in the complex.
Al-Shifa hospital comprises more than a dozen buildings in the heart of the city. Flotilla 13, the Israeli navy’s commando unit that led the attack that began on March 17, had taken over an outpatient clinic overlooking the complex as its temporary headquarters.
Most clinical and office equipment has disappeared or been destroyed. In its place were piles of Israeli
