World Health Organization (WHO) Emergency medical team coordinator Sean Casey said “more than 100 patients” were brought to Al-Aqsa Hospital within 30 minutes on Monday following reported explosions , particularly near the Al-Maghazi refugee camp.
All needed urgent treatment for their serious injuries, the WHO official told UN News, while “around 100” other bodies were brought to hospital around the same time.
Stuck under the rubble
The UN human rights office, OHCHRalso expressed deep concern on Tuesday over the ongoing “intense” bombardment in central Gaza, involving more than 50 strikes by the Israeli Defense Forces.
The attacks have killed more than 100 Palestinians since December 24, OHCHR reported, adding that this was particularly concerning given that Israeli forces had “ordered residents of southern Wadi Gaza to move towards central Gaza and Tal al-Sultan in Rafah.
Three refugee camps were affected, OHCHR spokesperson Seif Magango said in a statement, citing Al Bureij, Al-Nuseirat and Al-Maghazi. “Two strikes hit seven residential buildings in Al-Maghazi camp, killing around 86 Palestinians and injuring many others,” he said. “An unknown number of people are believed to be still trapped under the rubble. »
Tedros is angry
In a social media post on communities in southern Israel, during which some 1,200 people were massacred and 240 others taken hostage.
“WHO is extremely concerned by the unbearable pressure that the escalation of hostilities is placing on the few hospitals that remain open in Gaza – while most of the health system is decimated and brought to its knees,” said the head of the WHO. said Monday.
In a social media post, WHO’s Mr Casey called the situation at Al-Aqsa Hospital a “bloodbath”. He pointed to a nine-year-old boy, Ahmed, who lay dying on the floor of the facility after suffering terrible blast injuries while crossing the street near Nuseirat.
“It’s a bloodbath”
“We saw children, women, young men, elderly men and women, people bleeding to death,” he said, noting that patients could not easily be referred elsewhere for treatment. life-saving treatment. “There is blood everywhere in these hospitals right now. We almost exclusively see cases of trauma coming through the door, and on a scale that’s pretty hard to believe. It’s a bloodbath, as we’ve said before, it’s a carnage.
The development follows a joint WHO and UN aid coordination office (OCHA) Christmas Day visit to Al-Aqsa Hospital to assess needs following strikes in central Gaza this weekend.
Although Al-Aqsa Hospital has medical supplies and fuel to run the generators, Mr. Casey confirmed that the facility was accommodating far more patients than its bed capacity and its staff could accommodate them, which which means many injured patients would not survive the wait for treatment.
This situation is happening across the Gaza Strip, the WHO official continued, speaking from the UN Joint Humanitarian Operations Center in Rafah in the south, which also serves as a medical facility.
Fight all night
“There is no truly safe place in Gaza,” he continued. “Right now in Rafah, in front of the gate of this building, 50 meters from where I am sitting right now, there is a camp of thousands of people who have settled here… They are in shelters in plastic, plastic sheeting shelters just outside the door. And last night we heard fighting almost all night and reports came in during the day of many, many wounded who were hospitalized here in the south.
Hospital capacity in Gaza is about 20 percent of what it was before the October 7 escalation, but “almost all” hospital services have stopped functioning, the WHO official said. “Either because the facilities themselves have been affected, or because staff have been forced to flee, or because there is no more electricity or medical supplies, or because staff could not access it.
Waiting to die
Providing an update on seriously ill patients in northern Gaza, which he previously said “waited to die” At a church on the grounds of a hospital, Mr Casey said many were “still sleeping in the pews” on Monday. The level of destruction “is so incredible, so significant that the roads are full of rubble,” he continued, highlighting the logistical difficulties in reaching the most vulnerable.
“We still need to do more to try to move these patients, but options are becoming increasingly limited as health facilities become less accessible and health workers themselves are displaced,” he said. he declared.
According to the Gaza Health Ministry, around 20,000 people were killed during the latest escalation.
And in a related development, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported that the number of demolished Palestinian properties and associated displacement in the neighboring occupied West Bank has reached record levels.
The latest OCHA data indicates that 1,094 structures have been razed so far this year and 2,127 people have been uprooted, a record only reached in 2016, when more than 1,500 people were displaced.
