At least 49 bodies found in new mass grave at al-Shifa hospital
Civil defence teams in Gaza are pictured after discovering a third mass grave in the vicinity of al-Shifa hospital on 8 May 2024
Middle East Eye reports on 8 May 2024:
A third mass grave has been discovered in the ruins of Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital, the largest medical complex in the Palestinian enclave.
At least 49 bodies have been recovered so far from the mass grave, the government media office in Gaza said on Wednesday. “Government crews are still recovering more bodies until now,” it said. “The exhumation operations have not finished, and we expect to find dozens of new bodies.”
Footage shared online by local journalists showed bodies being uncovered and examined by civil defence teams amid the wreckage of the medical facility, which has been ravaged by Israeli attacks.
Israeli forces withdrew from al-Shifa in early April, after a two-week siege that left the entire complex destroyed and piles of bodies in its wake. Israeli officials said at the time that their forces arrested 900 people and killed 200 “terrorists” without harming civilians or medical personnel. Medical organisations and eyewitnesses strongly rejected the claim.
Gaza’s government media office said 400 people were killed by Israeli forces in al-Shifa, including “wounded, sick, and displaced people”. It said hundreds of people were still missing.
“Some of these bodies were found in pieces, some of these bodies were found without heads,” Motassem Salah, director of the health ministry’s emergency operations centre, told reporters on Wednesday.