Middle East

Gaza’s Last Hospital ‘Not Functional’ Under Israeli Siege: WHO

DIRE WARNING

“The cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the World Health Organization, said Sunday.

Injured Palestinians, including children, in Nasser Hospital
Belal Khaled/Getty Images

One of the last hospitals left in Gaza can no longer support all of the patients taking refuge there as it endures relentless Israeli fire, the World Health Organization said Sunday. “Nasser hospital in #Gaza is not functional anymore, after a weeklong siege followed by the ongoing raid,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the WHO, wrote on X, adding that the agency’s own relief team was barred from entering the hospital. He said of the more than 200 patients still there, at least 20 needed to be “urgently referred” to other hospitals for appropriate care. “The cost of delays will be paid by patients’ lives.” Nasser hospital near Khan Younis had sheltered thousands of refugees before the Israeli military ordered them to evacuate. It claimed Hamas was operating in the hospital—which the militant group has denied—and then raided it, detaining about 100 people and killing others. As Israel closes in on Rafah and shuts down hospitals in the south, it leaves virtually nowhere in Gaza for displaced Palestinians to go.

Read it at New York Times