Some vehicles of Israel's military started withdrawing from Gaza's main hospital after the ruthless raid that forced services at the already-devastated hospital to come to a halt, a source told Anadolu Agency (AA) Wednesday.
Soldiers remained inside after arrests of patients and family members, the source said.
A journalist stuck inside Gaza's main hospital encircled by Israeli troops told AFP that they had withdrawn from the devastated facility after entering it overnight. The journalist told Agence France-Presse (AFP) that the Israeli military was repositioning troops and vehicles outside the hospital walls.
Israeli forces had pushed into Gaza City's Al-Shifa Hospital in the early hours of the morning, raising fears for the safety of thousands of patients, staff and other civilians trapped inside.
A witness said the smell of decomposing bodies was everywhere in the facility, but nighttime fighting and airstrikes had been less intense compared to previous nights.
Palestinian authorities demanded urgent international protection for medical staff, patients and displaced people as the Israeli army stormed Al-Shifa Hospital Wednesday but found no hostages.
The United Nations believes that thousands, and perhaps more than 10,000 people – patients, staff and displaced civilians – may be inside and unable to escape because of fierce fighting nearby.
Hours after Israeli troops launched a night-time raid on Gaza's biggest hospital, soldiers interrogated patients in the compound's courtyard while other Palestinians stood stripped to their underwear.
"All men 16 years and above, raise your hands," a soldier shouted in accented Arabic through a loudspeaker at those sheltering inside Al-Shifa hospital, which has been at the center of fierce urban combat for days.
"Exit the building towards the courtyard and surrender," the soldier ordered, according to a journalist who visited the embattled hospital several days ago for interviews and was trapped inside because of the fighting outside.
About 1,000 male Palestinians, their hands above their heads, were soon led into the vast hospital courtyard, some of them stripped naked by Israeli soldiers checking them for weapons or explosives, the journalist told AFP.
Hours later, some 200 remained in their underwear, forced to stand beside tanks used in the military incursion into the medical facility.
The army labeled the raid a "precise and targeted" operation against Hamas but since their raid on the facility, the military has yet to produce any evidence to back their claim of Hamas running a command center beneath the hospital.
The Israeli military came under fire for releasing a video of a soldier pointing to a list on a hospital wall, claiming that the list had names of Hamas operatives on duty, but the list actually had days of the week written in Arabic.
Witnesses have described conditions inside the hospital as horrific, with medical procedures performed without anesthetic, families with scant food or water living in corridors, and the stench of decomposing corpses filling the air.
As Israeli forces raced through the corridors, hundreds of young men emerged from different wards, including the maternity section, which was hit by a strike a few days ago, the journalist reported.
Soldiers fired warning shots as they moved from room to room looking for Hamas militants, he said, adding the troops were also searching women and children, some of whom were in tears.
Meanwhile, the White House said the United States did not give Israel any kind of green light for its raid on Gaza's main hospital, adding that such decisions were for the Israeli military.
"We did not give an OK to their military operations around the hospital," National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters after Hamas said President Joe Biden was "wholly responsible" for the raid.
Biden spoke to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday but Kirby declined to say whether the U.S. president had been given forewarning of the offensive.
"I won't go into detail about the conversation," he said, adding however that "there's no expectation by the United States to map it all out."
The United States had "certainly talked to them about concerns over civilians."
