“The situation in the north of the Gaza Strip is catastrophic”, announced Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on the X social network, highlighting the “severe shortage of medical supplies associated with very restricted access, depriving people of vital care”.
The WHO director-general specifically noted the situation at Kamal Adwan, the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza, which was occupied by Israeli forces on Friday, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
According to the ministry, the attack on the Jabaliya camp facilities, which led to Israel launching a major military operation earlier this month, resulted in the deaths of two children.
The department also accused Israeli forces of detaining hundreds of staff, patients and displaced people.
The Israeli military said its forces were operating in the vicinity of Gamal Adwan, but said it had “not been informed of any direct fire or attacks in the area of the hospital”.
According to Tedros Ghebreyesus, after WHO temporarily lost contact with its staff during the chaos, the Gaza Ministry of Health announced the end of the blockade.
“But it came at a high price,” said the director general.
On Friday night, the WHO announced that three aides and another specialist were injured in an attack on the hospital and dozens of aides were detained at the health facility, which housed about 600 people, including patients, aides and others.
“After the arrest of 44 male employees, only one female employee, the hospital director and one male doctor remain at the hospital to take care of nearly 200 patients in need of medical assistance,” Tedros Ghebreyesus lamented today.
“Reports of damaged or destroyed hospital facilities and medical equipment during the siege are regrettable,” he added.
According to the representative, since the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, triggering the war, “Gaza’s entire health system has been under attack for more than a year”.
The attack killed 1,206 people in Israel, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Dozens of hostages kidnapped that day are being held by Hamas in Gaza.
The Israeli retaliatory military campaign claimed the lives of 42,924 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to data from the Gaza Ministry of Health, which the United Nations (UN) considers reliable.
“WHO reiterates – cannot stress enough – that hospitals must always be protected from conflict”, UN. The director general of the agency exemplified.
Any attack on hospital facilities would be a “violation of international humanitarian law,” he insisted, adding that the only way to save what was left of Gaza’s health system was “a collapsing, immediate and unconditional ceasefire.”
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