After the IDF leaves the Al-Shifa hospital, Palestinians search for their dead among the debris.

Recovery teams are currently excavating human remains that were left behind during a horrific two-week raid at the hospital by Israel’s military.

This week, a rehabilitation team in Gaza City had to sort through the debris of the Al-Shifa hospital, which made for silent and depressing labor. With shovels in hand, they dug up what looked like a shoulder blade, a rib cage, and a femur.

Once the cornerstone of the Gazan medical system, Al-Shifa was the target of a catastrophic raid by the Israeli military that lasted for two weeks in March. Concerns were raised regarding the safety of the hundreds of confined residents during the siege.

According to Mahmoud Basal, a spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense, Palestinian teams have retrieved the bodies of over 400 Palestinians from Al-Shifa, the adjacent neighborhoods, and the southern city of Khan Younis since the Israel Defense Forces retreated last week.

Families observed as workers collected remains, some of which were little more than ragged clothing wrapped around a cluster of bones and packed into white bags labeled “unidentified body,” in a video that was captured on Monday by an NBC News crew.

The head of general forensics at the Ministry of Justice, Khalil Hamada, stated, “Unfortunately, the bodies are rotten, are cut into pieces because of the bulldozers.” According to Hamada, Israeli forces buried the bodies in Al-Shifa’s sandy soil using bulldozers.

The World Health Organization reported on Saturday that there are a lot of shallow burials, that “many dead bodies were partially buried with their limbs visible,” and that “other bodies were uncovered and exposed to the heat.”

The WHO declared in a statement that “preserving dignity, even in death, is an indispensable act of humanity.” Hospital workers were compelled to bury 179 patients in a mass grave in November during the IDF’s first raid on Al-Shifa, in addition to the dead from the most recent offensive.

According to Israeli soldiers, the facility served as a focus for Hamas operations. The hospital was housing about 30,000 patients, medical personnel, and displaced persons, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The IDF and Gazan officials reported that hundreds of people were murdered and hundreds more were detained.

“Where have they disappeared to? If they were imprisoned or buried, we don’t know. We need assistance from someone. In an Arabic-language interview with NBC News on Monday, Maha Swelem, an Al-Shifa nurse, said, “I call on the entire world to stand with us.

Swelem claimed that she and roughly fifteen other people were gathered into one of the hospital’s buildings during the siege. Israeli forces took Swelem’s husband, a volunteer paramedic, after shooting four victims “in front of my eyes,” according to Swelem. She remarked, “I’m not sure what happened to him yet.” “Did they bury him after killing him?”

A member of the Gaza health emergency committee, Dr. Mutasim Salah, claimed that “the smell of death” pervaded the hospital’s burned remains. However, they were committed to continuing their efforts to identify the bodies, possibly provide comfort to the bereaved families, and record what he called a war crime against defenseless civilians.

Salah remarked, “It is impossible to describe the scene.” “We never imagined, saw, or heard that we would see a crime like this inside the Shifa Medical Complex at some point in the past.”

Al-Shifa Hospital was described by the United Nations as a “empty shell following the latest Israeli siege with most of the buildings extensively damaged or destroyed” in a tweet on Saturday.

Despite international law saying that hospitals should not be struck during wartime, Israeli soldiers have frequently assaulted hospitals in Gaza in the six months since the conflict began. The IDF claims that Hamas employs ambulances to carry militants, runs command centers inside hospitals, and directs gasoline intended for hospital patients toward military operations—all of which are refuted by Hamas and hospital personnel.

Israel’s military actions in Gaza have sparked strong international criticism, and numerous humanitarian organizations have charged that Israel violates international law by imposing collective punishment.

More than 1,200 people were killed in a terror attack by Hamas in Israel on October 7, and over 33,000 people have died as a result of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health.