WHO’s Director-General deplored the Israeli occupation army’s damage and destruction of the hospital’s facility and medical supplies during their siege of the hospital.
Oct 27, 2024
The World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom described on Saturday the health situation in the north of Gaza as “catastrophic” due to the ongoing Israeli military operations around and inside medical facilities.
Adhanom noted in a post on X that the siege of the medical facilities and the “critical shortage of medical supplies” along with “severely limited access” to these medical facilities are the core of this catastrophic situation, which is depriving people of “life-saving care.”
He revealed that the Health Ministry in Gaza informed the international organization that the siege on Kamal Adwan Hospital had ended, “but it came at a heavy cost.”
“Following the detention of 44 male staff members, only female staff, the hospital director, and one male doctor are left to care for nearly 200 patients in desperate need of medical attention,” he wrote on X.
He deplored the Israeli occupation army’s damage and destruction of the hospital’s facility and medical supplies during their siege of the hospital.
Moreover, he slammed Israel for targeting the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip during the over one-year-old genocide, stressing the need to protect medical facilities and staff.
“@WHO cannot stress loudly enough that hospitals must be shielded from conflict at all times, WHO’s director general said, reemphasizing that “any attack of healthcare facilities is a violation of international humanitarian law.”
“The only path to safeguarding what remains of Gaza’s collapsing health care system is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire,” Adhanom said.
He concluded by saying that “lives depend on it!”
Siege and Massacres
Amidst a bloody military operation and a cruel siege, in the north of the Gaza Strip, the Israeli occupation forces continue committing one massacre after the other against the Palestinian population, the latest of which is the Beit Lahia massacre.
Israel’s occupation forces carried out a horrific massacre on a residential area in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Saturday evening, an official from the Health Ministry reported to Al-Jazeera.
According to the official Palestinian news agency WAFA, the Israeli occupation army struck a residential bloc, resulting in at least 40 dead and many over 80 injured.
WAFA quoted medical sources as confirming that women and children were killed in the attack, which targeted at least five homes in the residential bloc in the proximity of the western roundabout in Beit Lahia.
The homes that were struck belong to the Abu Shdaq, Al-Masri, and Salman families.
Following the airstrikes, residents urgently called for aid to retrieve victims and tend to the wounded, as emergency services in northern Gaza were severely disrupted, halting ambulance operations in the area.
This comes as Israeli occupation forces continue to besiege northern Gaza for almost three weeks with access to food, water and medicines completely cut off.
Residential buildings and shelters have been bombed and hundreds of families forced out of their homes by Israeli forces and ordered to leave the north for areas elsewhere in Gaza, already destroyed in the year-long military assault on the enclave.
Ongoing Genocide
Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate ceasefire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza.
Currently on trial before the International Court of Justice for genocide against Palestinians, Israel has been waging a devastating war on Gaza since October 7.
According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 42,924 Palestinians have been killed, and 100,833 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7, 2023.
Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.
Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.
Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.
The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.
The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.
Later in the war, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians began moving from the south to central Gaza in a constant search for safety.
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