Israel’s incessant bombardment on and around hospitals in Gaza has pushed the besieged Palestinian territory’s healthcare system to the “brink of collapse”, the UN warned.
In a report documenting attacks between 12 October 2023 and 30 June 2024, the UN human rights office said that the conduct of the Israeli war on Gaza has had severe consequences for the Palestinian people’s access to medical attention.
“The destruction of the healthcare system in Gaza, and the extent of the killing of patients, staff, and other civilians in these attacks, is a direct consequence of the disregard for international humanitarian and human rights law,” it said.
The report documented at least 136 attacks on 27 hospitals and 12 other medical facilities which inflicted significant casualties on doctors, nurses, medics, and other civilians.
The strikes caused “significant damage to, if not the complete destruction of, civilian infrastructure”, the report pointed out.
“As if the relentless bombing and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza weren’t enough, the one sanctuary where Palestinians should have felt safe in fact became a death trap,” UN high commissioner for human rights Volker Turk said.
Daniel Meron, Israel’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, alleged the data presented in the report was “fabricated”. He said Israel operated in accordance with international law, would never target innocent civilians, and accused Hamas of using Gaza hospitals for what he called “terror activity”.
The report came just after Israel intensified attacks on hospitals in Gaza, drawing criticism from the head of the World Health Organization.
Israeli soldiers stormed the Kamal Adwan Hospital, one of the last remaining healthcare facilities in northern Gaza, last Friday, forcing out and detaining hundreds of patients and medical staff, the health ministry said.
The hospital’s director, Dr Hussam Abu Safia, was among the staff detained and his whereabouts remained unknown.
The Physicians for Human Rights Israel sent an “urgent request” to the Israeli military to reveal the location of Dr Abu Safia after he was “abducted” for refusing to leave the hospital “until every last patient was evacuated”, Al Jazeera reported.
Dr Abu Safia’s arrest was “part of a broader Israeli assault on Gaza’s healthcare system and the professionals sustaining it”, the rights group said, adding that Israeli forces had killed more than 1,000 healthcare workers in Gaza and detained over 230, with 130 still in custody.
The Israeli military claimed that it was conducting operations against Hamas infrastructure and fighters in the area of the hospital, without providing any details. It repeated the claim that Hamas fighters were operating inside Kamal Adwan but gave no evidence.
The UN report pointed out that deliberately directing attacks against hospitals and places holding the sick and wounded, provided they were not military objectives, would amount to war crimes.
