WHO DESCRIBES GRIM SCENE AT GAZA HOSPITALS
Aid workers say northern Gaza has no functioning sites
The northern Gaza Strip has no more functioning hospitals, the director-general of the World Health Organization has said, describing scenes of horror witnessed by aid workers in the ruins of two damaged medical facilities.
Aid workers who visited Al-Ahli and Shifa hospitals Wednesday during a rare humanitarian mission to deliver supplies “struggled to describe the immense impact recent attacks have had on these health facilities,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO chief, said in a statement posted to social media.
At Al-Ahli, aid workers found rows of dead bodies lined up outside the hospital, while severely injured civilians writhed in pain on the floor and the pews of the chapel inside of it, he said.
In a video that Tedros posted to social media, a member of the medical mission stands inside the chapel, with injured people and crucifixes on the wall visible behind him.
“There are patients here who have been injured for more than a month and have had no surgery; there are patients who have been operated on and are now getting postoperative infections because the hospital doesn’t have sufficient antibiotics,” the aid worker in the video, Sean Casey, says.
“They are suffering enormously here,” he adds. “This is a completely unacceptable situation.”
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs took part in the mission, which it said was only the third humanitarian convoy to reach northern Gaza since a pause in fighting ended Dec. 1 because of “the ongoing hostilities.”
A spokesperson for the Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the WHO’s claims. Israel has accused Hamas of using hospitals as command and control centers, allegations that Hamas and medical staff have denied. The Israeli military says it has uncovered tunnels and weapons, including at Shifa, the territory’s largest hospital complex, that it considers proof of its allegations.
Diplomats at the U.N. Security Council have been in intense negotiations this week over a resolution calling for a halt in fighting in the war in Gaza and a major increase in aid deliveries. The United States has delayed the vote, according to diplomats, and has been the only member of the Security Council to block demands for an immediate and permanent cease-fire, vetoing two such resolutions.
Tedros said a cease-fire was necessary “to reinforce and restock remaining health facilities, deliver medical services needed by thousands of injured people and those needing other essential care, and, above all, to stop the bloodshed and death.”
Both hospitals visited by the team of aid workers Wednesday are unable to provide much more than first aid — which means there are no working hospitals left in northern Gaza, he said.
On Thursday, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said that only nine of Gaza’s 36 hospitals were even “partially functional.”