‘No functional hospitals left in northern Gaza’, says WHO
The UN health agency said it had led missions to two badly damaged hospitals, Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli, in the north of the Palestinian territory on Wednesday.
GENEVA: There are no longer any functional hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, describing “unbearable” scenes of largely abandoned patients begging for food and water.
The UN health agency said it had led missions to two badly damaged hospitals, Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli, in the north of the Palestinian territory on Wednesday.
“Our staff are running out of words to describe the beyond catastrophic situation facing remaining patients and health workers,” said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory.
His comment came amid increasingly frantic diplomatic efforts to secure a pause in the war that Hamas says has already claimed 20,000 lives in Gaza, 70 per cent of them women and children.
The war began when Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,140 people, mostly civilians, and abducting about 250, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
WHO has already described Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza which last month was the focus of an extended Israeli army operation and has been devastated by Israeli bombardments, as “a blood bath”.
The smaller Al-Ahli hospital had since become the only place where surgeries were possible in the north, but its director said it had stopped operating on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli army.
Dying ‘slowly and painfully’
The WHO-led mission revealed that Al Ahli, which just two days ago was “overwhelmed with patients needing emergency care”, was now “a shell of a hospital”, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.
“There are no operating theatres anymore due to the lack of fuel, power, medical supplies and health workers, including surgeons and other specialists,” he added.
“It has completely stopped functioning.”
Of Gaza’s original 36 hospitals, only nine are now partially functional, all of them in the south.
“There are no functional hospitals left in the north.”
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