GAZA: Columns of Palestinians, some sick, some wounded made their way out of Gaza’s largest hospital Saturday, walking for hours through the debris of war as they sought a new refuge. Zionist special forces have raided Gaza’s largest hospital and terrorized the hundreds of Palestinians who had sheltered at Al-Shifa for days, searching for the Hamas command center the Zionists insist is concealed beneath. Both the militants and hospital managers deny any such base exists. The Zionist forces have so far failed to prove their claims.

Instructions to evacuate were issued Saturday, prompting the exodus of hundreds of patients and displaced towards the supposedly safer south of the Palestinian territory. “The streets were destroyed, there were bomb craters and a lot of decomposing bodies” near the hospital, said Samia al-Khatib, 45, who left Al-Shifa along with her husband and 15-year-old daughter. “There were scenes of horror, a real massacre,” she told AFP.

Some clutched makeshift white flags as they made their way between dead bodies and heavily armed Zionist soldiers flanked by tanks and armored vehicles. Along a road lined by destroyed buildings and charred vehicles, children walked barefoot, elderly men leant on canes and the few who could afford it used horse-drawn carts to move south, where the Zionist entity has urged civilians to go. One man carried his disabled daughter on his back. Another carried his injured daughter in his arms, a plaster cast on her tiny leg.

‘It was hell’

The hospital director said the Zionist army ordered the emptying of the facility. The Zionist military denied any such instructions, saying instead it had “acceded to the request of the director” to allow more civilians to leave.

At 8:00 am, the loudspeakers blared and a Zionist soldier ordered everyone to evacuate “within an hour” or risk bombardment, said Rami Sharab, 24, who was stuck in the hospital for some 20 days. “I was one of the first to come out,” said Sharab, who had sought refuge in the hospital complex with his family after his neighborhood in Gaza City was bombed. “We heard shots in the air and artillery fire.”

In all, more than 1.6 million people have been displaced in Gaza, around two-thirds of the territory’s population, according to the United Nations. The United Nations estimated 2,300 patients, staff and displaced Palestinians were sheltering at Al-Shifa before Zionist troops moved in on Wednesday.

During the operation Zionist soldiers interrogated patients in the compound’s courtyard, some left naked as soldiers checked them for weapons or explosives, witnesses said. “It was hell,” said Sharab. “They stripped us, searched us and beat us.” — AFP