WHO fears for remaining patients at Gaza's Nasser hospital

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-68348021

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Watch: WHO releases video from inside raided Gaza hospital

The World Health Organization fears for the safety of 130 patients at Gaza's Nasser hospital, which it declared non-functional following an Israeli raid.

The UN agency has led two missions to transfer 32 critically ill Palestinians from the complex in Khan Younis.

It says there is no electricity or running water, and that medical waste and garbage pose a disease risk.

Israel says its troops are delivering aid to ensure the hospital continues to function while they act against Hamas.

According to the Israeli military, they have detained hundreds of "terrorists" and found weapons and medicines intended for Israeli hostages held by Hamas since entering the facility last Thursday.

Hamas - which is proscribed as a terrorist organisation by Israel, the UK and others - has denied allegations that its fighters use hospitals for cover, saying they are being used as a pretext to destroy Gaza's healthcare system.

Only 11 of the Palestinian territory's 36 hospitals are still partially functional after four months of conflict, while three are functioning at minimal capacity.

Meanwhile, the Word Food Programme said it was pausing food deliveries to northern Gaza amid "complete chaos and violence due to the collapse of civil order".

It warned that the decision, taken after the looting of several trucks and the beating of one of the drivers, meant the "situation there will deteriorate further and more people risk dying of hunger".

The Israeli military launched a large-scale air and ground campaign in Gaza after Hamas gunmen killed about 1,200 people in southern Israel on 7 October and took 253 other people hostage.

Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry says 29,195 people have been killed in the territory since then, including at least 103 in the past 24 hours.

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The WHO said in a statement that its staff had led two high-risk missions on Sunday and Monday to move 23 critical patients, including two children, from the Nasser Medical Complex and provide supplies of medicines and food.

Four Palestinian Red Crescent ambulances transported the patients to the European hospital in Khan Younis, al-Aqsa hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah, and three field hospitals in the southern city of Rafah.

"Patients transferred during the missions included three suffering from paralysis - two of them with tracheostomy - and several others with external fixators for severe orthopaedic injuries. Two of the paralyzed patients required continuous manual ventilation throughout the journey, due to the lack of portable ventilators," it said.

The Israeli military released a photo showing its soldiers operating inside the Nasser hospital compound

WHO staff reported that the destruction around the hospital was "indescribable", with burnt and destroyed buildings, heavy layers of debris, and no roads to it still intact.

It warned that further disruption to lifesaving care for the estimated 130 sick and injured patients who remain inside the hospital along with at least 15 doctors and nurses would "lead to more deaths".

The WHO said that before the transfers its staff had twice been denied access to the hospital to carry out medical assessments and that it had received reports of the deaths of at least five patients in the intensive care unit.

It called the "dismantling and degradation" of Nasser hospital "a massive blow to Gaza's health care system".

Gaza's health ministry said Israeli forces had converted Nasser hospital into a "military barracks" and that the situation there had "gone beyond a disaster", posing a direct threat to the lives of the patients and staff.

On Monday, the Israeli defence ministry body overseeing policy for the Palestinian territories, Cogat, insisted that Nasser hospital was "operational during the entire IDF (Israel Defense Forces) activity, despite Hamas operatives posing as medical staff".

"We facilitated humanitarian aid and supplies to the hospital and co-ordinated a UN team to evacuate the patients," it wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

The aid deliveries included a UN tanker carrying 24,500 litres of diesel fuel, hundreds of water bottles, ration packs, loaves of bread, a replacement electricity generator and medicines donated by the WHO, it added.

Watch: Patients rushed through smoke, bodies moved - what we can see in video from Nasser hospital raid

On Sunday, the Israeli military said commandos had detained "hundreds of terrorists and other terror suspects who were hiding in the hospital", including some who had participated in the 7 October attacks, those with connections to the hostages and significant Hamas operatives.

They also found large quantities of weapons, a vehicle used on 7 October and another that belonged to an Israeli kibbutz which was attacked, as well as named boxes of medicine which should have been transferred to Israeli hostages under a deal agreed last month, it added.

The Palestinian Red Crescent also warned on Tuesday about the situation at the other major hospital in Khan Younis, al-Amal, where about 180 patients, medics and displaced people remain two weeks after Israeli troops raided it.

"Al-Amal hospital is currently under multiple attacks, as Israeli forces have directly targeted the third floor of the hospital, resulting in the burning of two rooms," a post on X said. "Additionally, the hospital's water lines were targeted."

There was no immediate comment from the IDF.