Hundreds of fighters killed in Gaza hospital

GAZA STRIP: Israeli forces have pulled out of Gaza’s largest hospital after an intensive two-week military operation against Hamas, leaving behind charred buildings and bodies in the sprawling complex.

Further raising regional tensions during the Gaza war, Israeli air strikes destroyed an Iranian embassy building in the Syrian capital Damascus.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards confirmed two high-ranking generals were among 11 people reported to have been killed.

Israel did not comment, but its arch foe Iran – a supporter of Hamas – vowed a “decisive response” and called on the international community to act.

The Israeli army carried out what it called two weeks of “precise operational activity” at the Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, before declaring it forces had withdrawn on Monday.

Israel said it had battled Palestinian

militants inside the hospital, killing at least 200 and recovering stockpiles of weapons, explosives and cash.

Israeli army spokesman Daniel Hagari said Israel had “apprehended over 900 individuals suspected to be involved in terror activity”, of which he said “over 500” were “definitely” Hamas or Islamic Jihad militants.

“There are more terrorists in the hospital than patients or medical staff,” he said, adding that there were about 300 patients, doctors and staff.

Hamas has denied operating from Al-Shifa and other health facilities. The health ministry in Hamas-ruled Gaza said “the scale of the destruction inside the complex and the buildings around it is very large”.

“Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been recovered from in and around the medical complex,” it said.