WHO says appalled by Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s Kamal Adwan Hospital
The World Health Organization has sounded the alarm about Israel’s destruction of a hospital in the northern Gaza Strip amid reports that the regime’s forces buried Palestinians alive at the facility’s courtyard during the operation.
WHO’s Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made the comment in a Sunday post on X social media platform concerning an Israeli operation targeting the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahia.
Ghebreyesus said the Israeli military’s attack on the facility had rendered it non-functional and resulted in the killing of at least eight patients and detention of many health workers.
“We learned that many patients had to self-evacuate at great risk to their health and safety, with ambulances unable to reach the facility,” he added.
The WHO’s head noted, “Of the deceased patients, several died due to lack of adequate healthcare, including a nine-year-old child.”
He also expressed “extreme concern” about the well-being of the internally-displaced people, who were sheltering in the hospital building at the time of the Israeli attack.
“Gaza’s health system was already on its knees, and the loss of another even minimally functioning hospital is a severe blow,” Ghebreyesus warned, adding, “Attacks on hospitals, health personnel, and patients must end. Ceasefire NOW.”
On Saturday, Qatar’s Al Jazeera television network reported that Israeli bulldozers had demolished tents of displaced Palestinians outside the hospital, “burying people alive” inside them.
Video footage provided by Al Jazeera showed mangled tents and belongings of Palestinians at the hospital’s courtyard.
The report said at least 20 bodies had been found lying in the yard following the Israeli operation.
The operation came amid the regime’s genocidal war on the Gaza Strip, which started on October 7 following an operation by the territory’s resistance movements, dubbed Operation al-Aqsa Storm.
Around 19,000 people, most of them women and children, have been killed in the Israeli strikes so far.
The Palestinian health minister has called for an international investigation into reports that Israeli forces have buried Palestinians alive in the courtyard of Kamal Adwan Hospital.
Mai Alkaila said on Saturday that information and testimonies collected from eyewitnesses, medical teams, and media crews indicate that the Israeli regime’s forces buried Palestinians alive in the hospital’s courtyard.
The Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor has also called for an international investigation into the horrific act.
Euro-Med said its teams are documenting what happened in the hospital, stressing the need for an international investigation “into all the horrific Israeli violations that happened to patients, displaced civilians and medical workers in the hospital over the past days.”
