GENEVA/ GAZA CITY: The World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has termed the situation in northern Gaza ‘catastrophic’ with “intensive military operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities”.

“The situation in northern Gaza is catastrophic,” Tedros wrote on X, warning that “a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care”.

His statement came a day after Israeli forces raided the last functioning hospital in northern Gaza and detained hundreds of staff, patients and displaced people during the raid, while the death toll in the territory rose to 42,924, most of them women and children.

Tedros lamented that the whole health system in Gaza has been under attack for over a year. “WHO cannot stress loudly enough that hospitals must be shielded from conflict at all times,” he said, stressing that “any attack of healthcare facilities is a violation of international humanitarian law”.

With 800 more killings in three weeks, death toll nears 43,000

“The only path to safeguarding what remains of Gaza’s collapsing health care system is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire.”

The WHO stated three health workers and another employee were injured in the Friday assault as dozens of health workers were detained at Kamal Adwan hospital, where around 600 patients, health workers and others were sheltering. “Following the detention of 44 male staff members, only female staff, the hospital director, and one male doctor are left to care for nearly 200 patients in desperate need of medical attention,” Tedros said.

“Reports of the hospital facilities and medical supplies being damaged or destroyed during the siege are deplorable,” he said.

Medics said at least two children had died inside the intensive care unit after Israeli fire hit the generators and oxygen station in the facility on Friday. Medical staffers have refused Israeli army orders to evacuate the hospital or leave their patients unattended. Before the army raid, medics said at least 600 people had been in the hospital, including patients and their escorts.

“The safety and lives of patients who are left inside Kamal Adwan Hospital without medical staff and much needed medication are at risk now,” said a health ministry official.

Three nurses were injured during the raid and three ambulance vehicles were destroyed, the ministry said.

Medics said at least 44 of the facility’s 70-member team of the hospital had been detained by the army, which later released only 14 of them.

As Israeli forces withdrew from the hospital complex, footage circulated by the health ministry, which Reuters could not immediately verify, showed damage to several buildings.

An Israeli military spokesperson declined comment on the hospital report.

800 Gazans killed in three weeks

During a three-week offensive, Israeli military strikes on the towns of Jabalia, Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya in northern Gaza have killed around 800 people, the Gaza ministry added.

Senior Hamas official Basem Naim said Israel’s incursions in northern Gaza and storming Kamal Adwan Hospital were a violation of international humanitarian law that it could not have committed without “the protection of Western countries”.

Israel regularly accuses Hamas of exploiting the civilian population and property, including hospitals and mosques, for military purposes. Hamas denies the accusation.

Israel’s strikes in Gaza have so far killed 42,924 people, the majority civilians, according to figures which the United Nations considers reliable. The toll includes 77 deaths in the previous 48 hours, according to the ministry, which said 100,833 people have been wounded and millions displaced in over a year.

Published in Dawn, October 27th, 2024