The Israeli army and its tanks were withdrawn from its Al Shifa hospital Gaza and were redeployed around the large hospital complex, where Israel claims a Hamas base is housed, an AFP journalist reported.
Since the morning the Israeli army has conducted a “targeted operation” at the nursing facility where, in addition to the patients and nursing staff, thousands of displaced persons have taken refuge.
Israeli soldiers interrogated dozens of civilians, who were then released.
World Health Organization: The business is completely unacceptable
The head of the World Health Organization described the operation of the Israeli army inside Al Shifa hospital in Gaza as “completely unacceptable”.
Israeli soldiers entered the hospital early in the morning, as part of their operations in the Palestinian enclave. Israel says the tunnels under the hospital house a Hamas headquarters, which the group denies.
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said at a press conference in Geneva, that patients and staff must be protected, even if hospitals are used for military purposes. “Hospitals are not battlefields. The Israeli army’s invasion of Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City is completely unacceptable,” he added.
The WHO, a UN agency, said it was considering the possibility of removing patients and medical staff from the hospital. “To ensure that this is possible, of course there needs to be safe passage and also fuel for the ambulances.”explained Rick Pieperkorn, the WHO representative in the occupied Palestinian Territories.
Piperkorn also said that based on the latest information he had, 34 of the 39 premature infants who were treated at the hospital are still alive and 82 bodies were buried in a mass grave on the grounds of the institution. Another 80 bodies remain unburied.
There is no oxygen, electricity or water in the hospital which is currently housing 633 patients, more than 500 staff and 4,000 evacuees.
Tedros, who earlier said the WHO had lost contact with medical staff at the hospital, clarified that he had no recent reports on the dead and wounded in Gaza. But he quoted the description of a WHO member from Al Shifa: “We have no water, we have no electricity, only shelling, shelling, shelling…”.
WHO legal adviser Steve Solomon said at the same press conference that medical facilities should, under international law, always be protected.
Source: News Beast
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