WHO. A health worker bandages a child's foot in a hospital in Gaza.
The World Health Organization said today that overwhelmed health workers in Gaza continue their efforts to rescue victims of missile attacks. Among them, the attack near the refugee camp in central Gaza is believed to have resulted in a large number of casualties.
More than 100 wounded were taken to Al-Aqsa hospital within half an hour of reported explosions near the Megazi refugee camp on Monday, including near the Megazi refugee camp, said Sean Casey, coordinator of the WHO's emergency medical team.
Casey told UN News that all of the patients were in serious condition and needed urgent treatment, while about 100 bodies with no vital signs were taken to hospital.
▌OHCHR: The attacks on central Gaza are worrying
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights today also expressed its deep concern over the more than 50 heavy bombardments launched by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) into central Gaza.
OHCHR reports that these attacks have killed more than 100 Palestinians since 24 December, and that the attacks on the area south of the Gaza River are even more worrying when the Israeli army ordered the population of the area south of the Gaza River to relocate to Talsultan in Rafah in central and southern Gaza.
OHCHR spokesman Seif Magango said in a statement that two of the recent attacks on three refugee camps, Bregi, Nuserrat and Megazi, hit seven residential buildings in the camp, killing some 86 Palestinians and injuring many others. He noted that an unknown number of people are believed to remain trapped under the rubble.
▌WHO: The wounded may not survive because they do not receive medical care
"We have seen first-hand children, women, young people, the elderly and women bleeding and now there is blood everywhere in the hospital," said Kathy, coordinator of the WHO Emergency Medical Team. Almost all of what we see are trauma cases, and they are on a massive scale. Unbelievable. As we said before, it was a massacre. ”
This follows a visit by WHO and the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs to Al-Aqsa Hospital on Christmas Day to assess the needs of central Gaza following attacks over the weekend.
Although Al-Aqsa Hospital has medical supplies and the fuel needed to run its generators, Casey noted that the hospital is receiving far more patients than its bed capacity and staff capacity can handle, meaning that many wounded may not survive while waiting for treatment.
"This is playing out all over Gaza, and there is no real safe place in Gaza," he said at the UN Joint Humanitarian Operations Centre in Rafah, south. Just 50 meters away from me, there is a refugee camp that houses thousands of people living in plastic sheds. Last night, we heard the sounds of fighting almost all night, and today during the day there were reports that many of the wounded were taken to hospitals in the south. ”
Casey said Gaza's hospital capacity is about 20 percent of what it was before the outbreak of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on October 7, but almost all hospital services have ceased operations due to the impact on the facilities themselves, staff being forced to flee, running out of electricity, running out of medical supplies, and staff not being able to access hospitals.
"Waiting for Death"
Casey also provided an update on the situation of seriously ill patients in northern Gaza. Earlier, he noted that the patients were "waiting to die" in a church inside a hospital, and that until Monday, many were still sleeping on benches.
He said the level of damage in northern Gaza was appalling, with roads littered with rubble and obstacles to reaching the most vulnerable.
"We still need to do more to try to move these patients," he said. But as we have become less accessible to health facilities and health workers themselves have been displaced, our options have become increasingly limited. ”
According to Gaza's Ministry of Health, about 20,000 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the current round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
▌OCHA: Displacement due to house demolitions in the West Bank is at a record high
OCHA also reported that the number of demolished Palestinian houses and the associated number of displaced persons in the occupied West Bank has reached record levels.
The latest figures show that 1,094 buildings have been razed so far this year in the region, leaving 2,127 people uprooted from their homes, more than the more than 1,500 displaced in 2016.
