The World Health Organization (WHO) fears that a massacre like the one that occurred last week at the Al-Ahli Baptist hospital in Gaza will be repeated, especially after the Palestinian Red Crescent asserted on social networks that Israel has threatened to bomb the Al Quds Hospital, located in the north of Gaza and in the capital of the strip of the same name, and is already attacking the areas adjacent to these facilities with rockets.
The director general of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has expressed his concern about this alleged order in a message broadcast through his official X account (formerly Twitter). "We reiterate that it is impossible to evacuate hospitals full of patients without endangering their lives," he said.
In addition, he reported that they have been able to regain contact with WHO workers inside Gaza, after the resumption of telecommunications in the strip that had been cut off for more than 24 hours by order of Israel. He has also insisted that Gazan hospitals remain overcrowded and in short supply of medical supplies. "We call once again for a humanitarian ceasefire to be initiated, and health facilities and their workers to be protected," he added.
According to the Palestinian Red Crescent, the Israeli army "continues to deliberately fire" rockets in the vicinity of Al Quds hospital "to force" medical staff, displaced people and patients to evacuate it. These recent attacks have caused "significant damage" to hospital services and have caused "suffocation" for patients and displaced people taking refuge there.
The threatened hospital complex is home to 14,000 people who, to protect themselves from the bombing, took refuge there, convinced that the attacks would not reach the complex. However, the director of the health center, Bachar Mourad, told AFP that they have received two calls in the last few hours asking them to evacuate the health center. "We received strong threats from the occupation forces to immediately evacuate the Al Quds hospital because it was going to be bombed," he said. Sources from the Israeli army have confirmed to the agency that they made the calls to request the transfer to the south of Gaza of the civilian population that houses the complex.
Meanwhile, the Islamist movement Hamas launched an appeal to the United Nations and the international community to take immediate measures to end Israel's threats to attack the Al-Quds hospital. For their part, Israeli authorities accuse Hamas of using hospital centers to hide weapons or fighters, although the Palestinian movement categorically denies this.
Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry has reported 57 attacks on medical facilities since the war began on October 7. The same statement adds that a dozen hospitals in the Gaza Strip are no longer functioning and that at least 116 health workers have died in the bombings, carried out in retaliation for the bloody attack on an unprecedented scale by Hamas in Israeli territory on last October 7th.
