Israel’s assault on Gaza health facilities and workers has completely “decimated” the health care system and has left Palestinians with “zero” options for care, a UN expert has warned.
Earlier this week, Israel struck Al-Ahli Hospital, rendering it inoperational and forcing all of its patients to evacuate. The horrific attack killed a child who died due to a lack of oxygen and worsened wounds for patients forced to leave. Israel had ordered an evacuation of the hospital but left extremely little time between the warning and the strike, witnesses said.
Al-Ahli was the last operational hospital in northern Gaza, with the region’s hospitals now shuttered after Israel’s relentless attacks and raids over the course of the genocide.
UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health, Tlaleng Mofokeng, said in a statement on Thursday that the attack has made “the provision of health services even more impossible in a system that has already been brought to its knees.”
“With this latest attack on the health system, the options for health care — especially emergency care — for the people of Gaza are reduced to zero, and Israel continues to operate with impunity,” said Mofokeng. “The health care system has been decimated.”
According to the World Health Organization, as of mid-March, Israel has launched at least 670 attacks on health care in Gaza, including attacks on hospitals, health workers and ambulances. Such attacks have killed at least 886 people, WHO reports.
Mofokeng has called for Israel to allow humanitarian aid, including crucial medicines, into the Strip, and to stop its attacks on health care, in accordance with international law.
WHO warned this week that all medical supplies are “desperately low” in Gaza, with health care workers forced to give treatments with little to no supplies, while a UN human rights official warned that “mass casualty events are now the norm.”
Meanwhile, the UN has reported that Israel’s total aid blockade over the past six weeks is now driving “what is likely the worst humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip” since the beginning of the genocide.
The heads of 12 humanitarian groups operating in Gaza, including major international groups like Save the Children and Oxfam, put out an urgent plea on Thursday for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza again.
“This is one of the worst humanitarian failures of our generation. Every single person in Gaza is relying on humanitarian aid to survive,” the groups said. “Survival itself is now slipping out of reach and the humanitarian system is at breaking point.”
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