THE ISRAELI MILITARY has withdrawn from Gaza’s main hospital after a two-week raid, leaving behind a swathe of destruction, Palestinian residents said.

Hundreds of people returned to Shifa Hospital and the surrounding area after the withdrawal early this morning, where they found bodies inside and outside the facility.

There was no immediate comment from the military, which has described the raid as one of the most successful operations of the nearly six-month campaign.

The army says it killed scores of Hamas and other militants, including senior operatives, and that it seized weapons and valuable intelligence.

Mohammed Mahdi, who was among those to return, described a scene of “total destruction”.

He said several buildings had been burned down. He counted six bodies in the area, including two in the hospital courtyard.

Another resident, Yahia Abu Auf, said there were still patients, medical workers and displaced people sheltering inside the medical compound.

He said several patients had been taken to the nearby Ahli Hospital, and that army bulldozers had ploughed over a makeshift cemetery inside the hospital compound.

“The situation is indescribable,” he said. “The occupation destroyed all sense of life here.”

Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals for military purposes and has raided several medical facilities.

Critics accuse the army of recklessly endangering civilians and of decimating a health sector already overwhelmed with war wounded.

The UN health agency said several patients died and dozens were put at risk during the raid, which brought even further destruction to a hospital that had already largely ceased to function.

Days of heavy fighting showed that Hamas can still put up resistance even in one of the hardest-hit areas of Gaza.

Video footage circulating online showed heavily damaged and charred buildings, mounds of dirt that had been churned up by bulldozers and patients on stretchers in darkened corridors.

Palestinians say Israeli troops forcibly evacuated homes near Shifa Hospital in central Gaza City and forced hundreds of residents to march south.

At least 21 patients have died since the raid began, World Health Organisation director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus posted late on Sunday on X, formerly Twitter.

He said over a hundred patients were still inside the compound, including four children and 28 critical patients. He also said there were no nappies, urine bags or water to clean wounds, and that many patients suffered from infected wounds and dehydration.

The military had previously raided Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital, in November, after saying Hamas maintained an elaborate command and control centre inside and beneath the compound.

It revealed a tunnel running beneath the hospital that led to a few rooms, as well as weapons it said it had confiscated from inside medical buildings, but nothing on the scale of what it had alleged prior to the raid.