Tehran, IRNA - The World Health Organization (WHO) has announced that a group tasked with assessing the humanitarian situation at al-Shifa Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip described it as a “death zone” following the Israeli regime’s shelling and gunfire at the facility.

According to a Reuters' report cited by the IRNA on Sunday, a team comprised of healthcare professionals as well as logistics and security staff from the United Nations and the WHO had been allowed to inspect the circumstances at the al-Shifa hospital only for one hour on Saturday. 

The team declared that there was a mass grave in the entrance of the hospital. The WHO issued a statement late on Saturday, declaring that the team could inspect the hospital after Israel forced some 2,500 refugees out of the healthcare center.

Reports say that hundreds of homeless people, patients and healthcare staff were forced to leave the hospital following merciless attacks on the facility by the Israeli forces in recent days. Israeli military forces scanned faces of some of the Palestinians who were leaving the hospital and then arrested them.

Before the raid on al Shifa, the Israeli regime had accused the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas of turning the underground parts of the hospital into a command center, an allegation which was categorically rejected by Hamas officials.

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