Euro-Med: Independent Probe Needed on Al-Shifa Hospital

Gaza, MINA – The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has called for an independent, international investigation into “Israel’s absurd claims that Palestinian groups were using Al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the Gaza Strip for military purposes”.

“The absence of any neutral international party’s involvement in the Israeli military raids and searches of Al-Shifa Medical Complex and other hospitals in the Strip raises widespread doubts about the Israeli narrative,” it said in a statement as quoted by Al Jazeera on Friday.

According to Euro-Med Monitor, Israel needs to offer the outside world more than a few rifles and other armaments to justify its attacks on Gaza’s hospitals and ill and injured civilians.

On Wednesday, Israeli military forces launched an attack on Al Shifa Hospital after the United States said Hamas was operating at the largest hospital in Gaza.

Israel forcibly searched Al Shifa Hospital and fired smoke bombs into the emergency unit.

Doctors said no shots were fired from inside the medical complex, but they heard gunfire coming from Israeli forces in the direction of the hospital.

It is not yet known how many lives were lost as a result of the attack. Because communication channels were also blocked when the raid occurred.

According to a report by journalist Al Jazeera, the Al Shifa Hospital building was reported to have been completely damaged as a result of the Israeli invasion.

The hospital’s special operations building was said to have been destroyed after Israeli troops blew up a warehouse for medicines and medical equipment inside the hospital.

“The Israeli military has completely torn it apart, all the partitions, the walls between the rooms and all the medical equipment in the building have been completely destroyed,” wrote an Al Jazeera report on Thursday.

Not only that, Hani also said that there were reports that around 200 civilians were blindfolded, interrogated, stripped of their clothes and taken to an unknown area. Their fate at this time no one knows.

Hamas and the Al Shifa hospital management themselves have denied that there is a Palestinian militia headquarters under the hospital. (T/RE1/P2)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA)