A mass grave with nearly 300 bodies has been uncovered at a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Gaza Civil Defense workers said Monday, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area earlier this month.

Col. Yamen Abu Suleiman, Director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis told CNN Monday that “today, 73 bodies were recovered” in the courtyard at the Nasser Medical Complex which brought the “total number to 283.”

Suleiman alleged that some of the bodies had been found with hands and feet tied, “and there were signs of field executions. We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.”

CNN is unable to verify Suleiman’s claims and cannot confirm the causes of death among the bodies being unearthed.

CNN has reached out to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) for comment following the discovery of the mass grave including whether bodies that had been buried at the hospital had been disinterred for DNA tests, and whether they had been reburied. CNN has sent several questions to the IDF on Sunday and Monday.

Previously, a Khan Younis Civil Defense spokesman and head of the search mission, Raed Saqr, told CNN that they are searching for the bodies of another 400 missing people after the Israeli military left on April 7.

A CNN stringer who visited the scene Sunday said people had buried the bodies of family members who had been killed in the grounds of the hospital in January as a temporary measure. When they returned after the Israeli withdrawal they found the bodies had been exhumed – apparently because the IDF was using DNA testing to determine whether any of the hostages held in Gaza were among the dead.

The bodies were then placed in at least one collective grave, the stringer said.

One man at the scene told CNN that he was yet to find the body of his 21-year old son, who was killed in January.

“I haven’t found him yet. We had buried him over there. But we can’t find him. And we wanted to make him a decent grave.”

Another man, who said his brother Alaa was also killed in January, said: “I am here today looking for him. I have been coming here to the hospital for the last two weeks and trying to find him. Hopefully, I will be able to find him.”

Pointing to a fallen palm tree, the man said his brother had been temporarily buried in that spot.

“I had buried him there on the side, but I can’t find him. The Israelis have dug up the dead bodies, and switched them. They took DNA tests and misplaced all the dead bodies.”

The man’s mother said they had been searching for two weeks and had been unable to find his body.

Another woman told CNN she had spent 10 days searching for the body of her daughter, who had been killed and buried in the hospital grounds late in January after a nearby residential building had been struck.

She said the Israelis “have dug out the dead bodies out and they switched them. She and her uncle’s wife were buried at the same hour.”

The mother added: “We have found the body of her uncle’s wife. But the rest we can’t find them.”

Saqr told CNN Sunday that Civil Defence personnel had been searching for bodies at the medical complex for three days so far and the operation was ongoing.

“We have information that there are 400 missing people, and we are continuing to search for the rest of the bodies.”

The IDF has said it has removed dozens of bodies from Gaza for DNA tests in Israel, before returning the remains in containers.

The area around the Nasser Medical Complex saw intense bombardment and combat in January and February. At the time, CNN reported on the burial of bodies in the hospital grounds because of a lack of safe access to cemeteries.

Israeli troops storm back into eastern Khan Younis; bodies recovered in hospital ruins

Palestinians inspect destroyed residential buildings in Khan Younis

 Israeli troops fought their way back into an eastern section of Khan Younis in a surprise raid, residents said on Monday, sending people who had returned to abandoned homes in the ruins of the southern Gaza Strip's main city fleeing once more.

Elsewhere in Khan Younis, scores more bodies were recovered from what Palestinian authorities said were mass graves on the site of the city's main hospital, abandoned by Israeli troops. Further south there were fresh air strikes on Rafah, the last refuge where more than half of the enclave's 2.3 million people have sought shelter.

Israel abruptly pulled most of its ground troops out of the southern Gaza Strip this month after some of the most intense fighting of the seven-month-old war. Residents have begun making their way home to previously unaccessible neighbourhoods of what had been the enclave's second-biggest city, finding homes reduced to rubble and unrecovered dead in the streets.

"This morning many families who had left here in the past two weeks to go back home to Abassan came back. They were too frightened," Ahmed Rezik, 42, told Reuters from a school where he is sheltering in the western part of Khan Younis, referring to a district in the east.

"They said tanks pushed in the eastern area of the town under heavy fire, and they had to run for lives," he told Reuters via a chat app.

Israel launched its war in Gaza after fighters from the Hamas Islamist militant group that runs the enclave burst across the border fence on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and capturing more than 250 hostages, by Israeli tallies.

Israel responded by launching a ground assault on Gaza, vowing to annihilate Hamas. More than 34,000 people have since been confirmed killed according to Gaza health authorities, with thousands more bodies feared lost in the rubble.

'THE SCENE IS TOUGH'

In the ruins of what had been Nasser hospital, the biggest in southern Gaza, Reuters saw emergency workers in white hazmat suits digging corpses out of the ground with hand tools and a digger truck. The emergency services said 73 more bodies had been found at the site in the past day, raising the number found over the week to 283.

Israel says it was forced to battle inside hospitals because Hamas fighters operated there, which medical staff and Hamas deny.

Gaza authorities say the bodies recovered so far are from just one of at least three mass graves they have found at the site.

"We expect to find another 200 bodies at the same mass grave in the coming two days before we will begin working at the two other cemeteries," Ismail Al-Thawabta, director of the Hamas-run government media office, told Reuters.

He accused Israel of carrying out "executions" at the hospital and covering up the crimes by burying bodies with a bulldozer. Israel strongly denies having carried out executions.

Relatives have been coming to take away loved ones for reburial. Family members brought the body of Osama al-Shoubagy, one of those recovered inside the hospital grounds, to a graveyard on Monday to rebury him next to his sister, to whom he had once donated a kidney when she was sick.

"My young daughter asked me to visit the grave of her father. I would tell her that as soon as we bury him, we will visit him. Thank God. The scene is tough, but we might find some relief after burying him," said his wife Soumaya.

In one hand she held a few yellow flowers, in the other, the hand of their small daughter Hind, who wore a pale yellow Disney "Frozen" tracksuit to say goodbye to her father.

"He loved me, (and used to) buy things for me, and he used to take me out," the small girl said by the side of the new grave.

Gaza residents reported air strikes in several other areas, including Rafah, where a day earlier doctors had performed a caesarean section to save a baby from the womb of his mother who was among those killed.

In Nusseirat in central Gaza, officials said an air strike had damaged solar panels the hospital relies on for power.