KUALA LUMPUR – World Health Organisation (WHO) staff visited a Gaza hospital on Monday, receiving casualties from deadly strikes on a refugee camp and hearing distressing stories of entire families killed and seeing dying children.
Citing a report by AFP, United Nations health agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was quoted as saying that WHO’s team heard harrowing accounts shared by health workers and victims of the suffering caused by the explosions.
“One child had lost their whole family in the strike at the camp. A nurse at the hospital suffered the same loss,” he said on X.
According to the Health Ministry in Gaza, at least 70 people were killed in Israeli strikes on three houses in the Al-Maghazi refugee camp late Sunday.
AFP was unable to independently verify the toll.
The Israeli military said it was “reviewing the incident” and is “committed to international law, including taking feasible steps to minimise harm to civilians”.
Rows of victims’ bodies, shrouded in white bags, lined the ground at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, ahead of a mass funeral.
The Al-Aqsa Hospital staff had reported receiving around 100 casualties from the blasts, Tedros said.
“The hospital is taking in far more patients than its bed capacity and staff can handle,” he said.
“Many will not survive the wait,” he warned, insisting that “this latest strike on a Gazan community shows just why we need a #CeasefireNOW”.
The war broke out when Hamas fighters launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7 and killed about 1,140 people, mainly civilians, and seized 250 hostages, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel has responded with a relentless military campaign that has killed at least 20,670 people, mostly women and children, according to Gaza Health Ministry.
Meanwhile, Sean Casey, a WHO Emergency Medical Teams coordinator who was on a mission to Al-Aqsa Hospital, described doctors providing pain relief to a critically injured 9-year-old boy named Ahmed.
“He was being treated basically with sedation to ease his suffering as he dies,” Casey said in a video shot inside Al-Aqsa, seeming to fight back tears.
“He was crossing the street in front of the shelter where his family is staying, and the building beside him blew up.
“He was hit by shrapnel; by rubble, his brain matter was exposed.
“There’s nothing anybody can do for him. Like so many cases here, there is no capacity to manage complex neurological cases or complex trauma cases,” he said.
WHO has warned that only nine of Gaza’s original 36 hospitals remain partially functional.
“We as an international community should not accept that thousands upon thousands of people, including children, are being blown up and killed while they’re crossing the street or sleeping in their beds.
“This is an unacceptable situation,” Casey said, demanding a ceasefire.
“This has to stop.” – December 26, 2023