The director of the World Health Organization (WHO) this Sunday lamented the “decimation” of the health care system in the war-torn Gaza Strip and reiterated the urgent call for a ceasefire.
“The decimation of Gaza’s healthcare system is a tragedy,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus stated on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
The WHO has long been alarmed by the state of healthcare following the outbreak of the bloodiest war ever in Gaza, following the attack, unprecedented in scale and actions, by Hamas against Israel on October 7.
At the time, Palestinian Islamist militants killed about 1,140 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP news agency count based on Israeli data, and captured about 250 hostages, 129 of whom are believed to still be in captivity in Gaza. .
Israel’s military campaign, which includes massive aerial bombardments, has killed 20,424 people, most of them women and children, according to Israel’s Hamas-run Health Ministry.
The WHO warned last week that there are no longer functioning hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip.
After visiting two badly damaged hospitals in the north last week, Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli, WHO officials described “unbearable” scenes of largely abandoned patients, including young children, begging not for treatment but for food and water.
The hospitals, which are protected by international humanitarian law, have been hit several times by Israeli attacks in Gaza since the start of the war.
The Israeli military accuses Hamas of running tunnels under hospitals and using medical facilities as command centers, an accusation denied by the Islamist group.
As of December 20, WHO had recorded 246 attacks on healthcare facilities and ambulances in Gaza, resulting in 582 deaths and 748 injuries.
Source: DN
