After IDF retreat from Al-Shifa hospital, Palestinians sift through rubble for their dead

Palestinians are searching through the rubble of Al-Shifa hospital for their dead after the Isreali Military retreats.

It was quiet, grim work for a recovery team this week as it sifted through the rubble of Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City. Shovels in hand, it unearthed what appeared to be a femur, a shoulder blade, the bones of a rib cage.

For two weeks in March, the Israeli military carried out a devastating raid at Al-Shifa, once the pillar of the Gazan medical system. The siege raised fears for the safety of hundreds of civilians trapped inside. 

Since the Israel Defense Forces withdrew last week, Palestinian crews have so far recovered the bodies of more than 400 people from Al-Shifa, the surrounding neighborhoods and the southern city of Khan Younis, according to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense.

In a video recorded Monday by an NBC News crew, families watched as workers gathered remains, some of them little more than tattered clothing tangled around a cluster of bones and piled into white bags labeled “unidentified body.”

A Palestinian forensic and civil defense crew recovers human remains at Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza this week.AFP- Getty Images“Unfortunately, the bodies are rotten, are cut into pieces because of the bulldozers,” said Khalil Hamada, the head of general forensics for the Ministry of Justice. Hamada said Israeli forces used bulldozers to bury the dead in the sandy soil of Al-Shifa.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/idf-retreat-al-shifa-hospital-palestinians-rubble-dead-rcna147061

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