As Israel continues its raid of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex in Gaza City for the sixth day in a row on 23 March, Gaza's Government Media Office was told by medical staff and displaced trapped inside that the army is threatening them with either destroying the hospital or torturing, interrogating, and executing them.
The government media office said in a statement, "There are testimonies from within the Al-Shifa Medical Complex indicating that the occupation army threatened the medical staff inside the hospital buildings and the displaced, that it would bomb those buildings and destroy them over their heads, or that they would go out for torture, investigation, and execution."
Al-Shifa Hospital used to be Gaza's largest and most equipped medical facility. Now, it lacks the means to treat patients altogether. Infections are spreading among trapped patients, and nurses are being executed.
AFP spoke to eyewitnesses at the hospital who said that "all men," including the sick and physically disabled, had been abducted by the Israeli army. A woman named Mariam said: "They asked us at around dawn with loudspeakers to go out or they would bomb the building."
The Director General of the Government Information Office, Ismail Al-Thawabta, stated that Israeli forces killed more than 100 people inside the Al-Shifa Complex, including some medical personnel who were executed inside the complex.
Thawabta reported that four patients were killed inside the hospital when Israeli forces prevented their treatment.
Newly-released detainees and eyewitnesses told Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor earlier this week that Israeli forces executed abductees from the hospital.