Israeli troops leave Gaza's Shifa Hospital a wreck in sea of rubble

Israeli forces have withdrawn from Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after a two-week operation, the Israeli military said on Monday, leaving behind a wasteland of destroyed buildings and Palestinian bodies scattered in the dirt of the complex.

Hundreds of residents rushed to the area around the Gaza Strip's largest hospital to check on damage to the surrounding residential districts after fighting between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas group that administers Gaza.

The Israeli military said it had killed and detained hundreds of gunmen in clashes in the area of the hospital, and seized weaponry and intelligence documents. Hamas and medical staff deny that Palestinian fighters have any armed presence in hospitals.

A spokesman for Gaza's Civil Emergency Service said Israeli forces had executed two people whose bodies were found at the complex in handcuffs, and used bulldozers to dig up the grounds of the complex and exhume buried bodies. Reuters could not verify the allegation of executions and Israel's military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

"I haven't stopped crying since I arrived here, horrible massacres were committed by the occupation here," said Samir Basel as he surveyed Al Shifa. "The place is destroyed, buildings have been burnt and destroyed. This place needs to be rebuilt - there is no Shifa hospital anymore."

"I went out looking to buy some medicine from a pharmacy and what I saw was heart-breaking. Complete streets with buildings that used to stand there had been destroyed," said Abu Mustafa. "This is not war, this is genocide."

Israel said operations inside Al Shifa had been conducted "while preventing harm to civilians, patients and medical teams."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that around 200 gunmen have so far been killed at Al Shifa hospital and that hundreds more had surrendered.

"No hospital in the world looks like this. This is what a house of terrorists looks like," Netanyahu said at a news conference in Jerusalem.

Al-Aqsa Hospital targeted 'precisely'

Israeli strikes killed 77 Palestinians in Gaza in the past 24 hours, health authorities said on Sunday, as Egypt hosted an Israeli delegation for a new round of talks in a bid to secure a truce with Gaza's Hamas rulers.

The Israeli military said it killed a senior Islamic Jihad militant in a strike on a command center in the courtyard of the Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza. It did not mention his name or rank.

"The command center and terrorists were struck precisely," the military said, adding the strike was intended to minimize "harm to uninvolved civilians in the area of the hospital."

"The Al-Aqsa Hospital building was not damaged and its functioning was not affected."

Palestinian health officials and Hamas media said the strike hit several tents inside the Al-Aqsa Hospital, killing four people and wounding several, including five journalists.

More than 32,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's military offensive in Gaza since October 7, according to the health authorities. Health officials say most of the fatalities are civilians, while Israel says at least a third are fighters.

The war erupted after Hamas militants broke through the border and rampaged through communities in southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and abducting 253 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

Thousands in Jerusalem anti-government protest

Tens of thousands of people demonstrated in Jerusalem on Sunday against Netanyahu's government and against exemptions granted to ultra-Orthodox Jewish men from military service, in scenes reminiscent of mass street protests last year.

Protest groups, including some that led the mass demonstrations that rocked Israel in 2023, organized the rally outside parliament, the Knesset, calling for a new election to replace the government. The protesters also want a more equal share in the burden of army service that binds most Israelis. 

Netanyahu spent Sunday in hospital undergoing surgery for a hernia, discovered during a routine checkup on Saturday. The prime minister told journalists "I assure you that I will get through this treatment successfully and return to action very quickly," and on Monday the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem said Netanyahu was conscious and conversing with family.

Netanyahu was fitted with a pacemaker last July, while Israel was ensnared in its worst domestic crisis in decades, with widespread protests against his hard-right government's judicial overhaul plan.

Negotiations step up a gear

The two sides have stepped up negotiations, mediated by Qatar and Egypt, on a six-week suspension of Israel's offensive in return for the proposed release of 40 of 130 hostages still held by Hamas militants in Gaza.

Netanyahu vowed to keep up military pressure on Hamas, while showing flexibility in the talks, saying that only that combination would bring about the release of hostages.

Hamas wants to parlay any deal into an end to the war and withdrawal of Israeli forces. Israel rules this out, saying it would eventually resume efforts to dismantle the governing and military capacities of Hamas, which is sworn to its destruction.

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Hamas would not be present at the talks in Cairo, an official said, as it waited to hear from mediators on whether a new Israeli offer was on the table. Hamas also wants hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who were displaced from Gaza City and surrounding areas southward during the first stage of the war to be allowed back north.

The World Court on Thursday unanimously ordered Israel, accused by South Africa of genocide in Gaza, to take all necessary and effective action to ensure basic food supplies to the population.

The Gaza war has stoked long-simmering violence in the occupied West Bank, set off cross-border fighting with Lebanon's Hezbollah and drawn missile launches against Israel from other Iranian-backed militias in Yemen and Iraq.

Stabbings in Israel

In signs of spreading tensions within Israel, emergency services said a member of the country's Arab minority stabbed three soldiers in a bus stop in the southern city of Beersheba on Sunday before one of them shot him dead. Hours later, a knife-wielding Palestinian was shot dead after wounding three people in a shopping mall in nearby Gan Yavne, Israeli media said.

In the southern Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis, Israeli forces continued to blockade the two main hospitals, and tanks shelled areas in the middle and eastern areas of the territory.

Palestinian health officials said an Israeli air strike killed nine people in Bani Suhaila near Khan Younis, while another air strike killed four people in Al-Maghazi camp in the central Gaza Strip.

The Israeli military said it killed 15 gunmen in the central Gaza Strip and several more in Khan Younis, including near Al-Amal hospital.

Israel's Red Sea port city of Eilat came under an aerial attack on Monday that caused no casualties, the military said, and an armed group in Iraq issued a claim of responsibility.

The military's statement said a flying object launched from east of Israel had struck a building in Eilat. It did not elaborate on the object or the provenance.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a militia, said in a statement that it had attacked a "vital objective" in Israel "using appropriate weapons." It did not offer further details.

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