Gaza: The situation in the northern part of the Palestinian enclave is “catastrophic”, WHO says

The head of the World Health Organization (WHO) warned yesterday (Saturday) that the situation in the northern Gaza Strip is “catastrophic”, with “intensive military operations taking place in and around health infrastructure.”

“The situation in northern Gaza is catastrophic,” Tedros Adanom Ghebeyesus told X, stressing that “the severe shortage of medical equipment deliveries combined with severely restricted access is depriving people of vital care.”

Tedros specifically referred to the situation at Kamal Antwan Hospital, the last operating hospital in northern Gaza, which was raided by Israeli forces on Friday, according to the Palestinian enclave’s health ministry.

The ministry added that the Israeli army’s raid on the hospital, located in the Jabalia settlement – where Israel has been conducting a major military operation for weeks – claimed the lives of at least two children who were being treated in the intensive care unit after the generators and oxygen station were hit by Israeli fire on Friday.

Meanwhile, doctors at the hospital reported that at least 44 of the 70 members of Kamal Antwan’s health staff were arrested by the Israeli army. The army later released 14 of them, including the hospital’s director.

In addition to the health staff, the Israeli army is accused of arresting patients and displaced persons who had taken refuge in Kamal Antwan.

For its part, the Israeli army said its forces were operating around Kamal Antwan, but added that “we have not been informed of any actual firing and strikes in the area of the hospital.”

Tedros noted yesterday that the Gaza Health Ministry informed the WHO, which temporarily lost contact with its staff at the hospital due to the chaos, that the siege of Kamal Antwan had ended.

“But it came at a high price,” Tedros said.

On Friday evening, the WHO had announced that three health workers and another worker were injured in the Israeli army’s raid on the hospital and that dozens of health workers were detained inside Kamal Antwan, where some 600 people (patients, health workers, displaced people and others) were held.

“After the arrest of 44 male workers and one female worker, the hospital director and a male doctor are left to take care of nearly 200 patients in desperate need of medical attention,” Tedros complained yesterday.

For its part, the non-governmental organization Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) said one of its surgeons who was at the hospital has disappeared.

“We are very concerned for the safety (…) of doctor Mohamed Obeid, an MSF orthopaedic surgeon who had taken refuge and was working at the hospital,” the NGO wrote in X, explaining that it had lost contact with him since Friday.

“We are trying to contact our colleague and are urgently seeking information about his location,” MSF added. “We ask that his safety and protection be ensured, as well as that of all medical staff in Gaza.”

“The entire health system in Gaza has been under attack for more than a year,” Tedros complained.

“The WHO cannot stress strongly enough that hospitals should be protected at all times in the conflict,” he added. “Any attack on hospital facilities is a violation of international humanitarian law.”

“The only way to save what is left of Gaza’s collapsing health system is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire,” the WHO director-general concluded.

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