UN NEWS: The head of the UN health agency Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has spoken out against the “effective destruction” of a hospital in northern Gaza by Israeli forces over the weekend, leading to the deaths of eight patients including a nine-year-old child.
Kamal Adwan Hospital was raided by the Israeli military over four days last week and the World Health Organisation (WHO) said that many health workers were reportedly detained.
“Gaza’s health system was already on its knees and the loss of another even minimally functioning hospital is a severe blow,” Tedros wrote on social platform X.
Less than a third of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are at least partially functional, including only one in the enclave’s north.
“Attacks on hospitals, health personnel and patients must end. Ceasefire NOW,” Tedros insisted.
Displaced persons’ tents ‘bulldozed’
The WHO chief said that many patients at Kamal Adwan had to self-evacuate “at great risk to their health and safety” while ambulances were unable to reach the facility.
UN Humanitarian Affairs Coordination Office OCHA said in an update that on Saturday Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital and according to media reports “an Israeli military bulldozer flattened the tents of a number of internally displaced persons outside the hospital, killing and wounding an unconfirmed number of people”.
Tedros said on X that WHO is “extremely concerned” for the well-being of those displaced people.
According to OCHA the Palestinian Ministry of Health in Ramallah has called for an investigation into the incident. OCHA also quoted the Israeli army as saying that it had detained 90 people as part of the operation and “found weapons and munitions inside the hospital”.
Communications Blackout
Due to a telecommunications and internet blackout in Gaza which started last Thursday and continued into the weekend, OCHA stressed that its latest update on the humanitarian situation in the Strip provided only “limited” information from the past 24 hours.
Gaza’s health authorities have not updated their casualty numbers since the start of the blackout, which at that point stood at 18,787 fatalities and over 50,000 people injured since October 7, 2023.
The UN Office reported continuing “heavy Israeli bombardments” across the Strip over the weekend in particular in Khan Younis in the south and several areas of Gaza city in the north.
Intense fighting raged between Israeli forces and Palestinian armed groups in Khan Younis and Rafah, as well as continued firing of rockets by Palestinian armed groups into Israel, OCHA said.
Second Border Crossing Opens
The humanitarian situation in the enclave remains desperate as most of the population is displaced, crowded into a small area in the south, facing dire sanitary conditions and lacking food and water.
Hopes for a scale-up of aid deliveries saw a boost with the announcement on Friday of the opening of the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and Gaza, which was welcomed by the aid community.
The crossing reportedly opened on Sunday for the first time since 7 October. Until now, only the Rafah border crossing in the south had been open since deliveries resumed on October 21 2023.
“The fast implementation of this agreement will increase the flow of aid,” UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths, who heads OCHA, said in reaction to the development, “but what the people in Gaza need most is an end to this war”.
UN workers delivering medical supplies to the Al-Shifa Hospital in north Gaza on 16 December have described the emergency department as a “bloodbath”, with hundreds of injured people inside, and a constant flow of new patients.
According to the team, patients with trauma injuries were being sutured on the floor, limited to no pain management was available at the hospital, and the emergency department was so full that workers had to take care not to step on patients on the floor.
Al-Shifa Hospital, formerly the most important and largest referral hospital in Gaza, is now barely functioning: the operating theatres and other major services are not working due to a lack of fuel, oxygen, specialized medical staff, and supplies. The hospital is only able to provide basic trauma stabilization and has no blood for transfusion.
A handful of doctors and nurses, and some 70 volunteers, are working under what WHO staff described as “unbelievably challenging circumstances” in a hospital “in need of resuscitation.”
In a statement released on Saturday, WHO said that it is committed to strengthening Al-Shifa Hospital in the coming weeks so that it can resume at least basic functionality, provide critically needed lifesaving services, and serve “a besieged people trapped in a cycle of death, destruction, hunger, and disease”.
Substantial additional specialized medical, nursing and support staff, including emergency medical teams, are urgently needed, and basic humanitarian needs are not being met: tens of thousands of displaced people are sheltering in the hospital, which is experiencing a severe shortage of food and safe water.
Currently, Al-Ahli Arab Hospital remains the only partially functional hospital in north Gaza along with three minimally functional hospitals – Al-Shifa, Al Awda and Al Sahaba Medical Complex – down from 24 before the conflict. WHO has grave concerns about the unfolding situation at Kamal Adwan Hospital in north Gaza, which has reportedly been at the centre of a military operation.
The UN workers at Al-Shifa Hospital were taking part in a joint UN mission, made up of staff from the World Health Organization (WHO), the UN Office for Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), the UN Department for Safety and Security (UNDSS), and the UN Mine Action Service (UNMAS). The team delivered medicines and surgical supplies, orthopaedic surgery equipment, and anaesthesia materials and drugs to the hospital.
