Dozens of mutilated bodies have been found at al-Shifa Hospital after the withdrawal of Israeli soldiers following a two-week raid. Gaza’s largest medical facility has been left in ruins.
Published On 1 Apr 2024
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Officials from the United Nations who conducted evacuation missions from Gaza’s Nasser Hospital have described “appalling” conditions at the enclave’s second-largest medical facility, saying an Israeli military operation there has transformed a “place of healing” into a “place of death”.
The comments, in videos posted online on Wednesday, came amid growing concern for the dozens of patients and staff who remain trapped inside the hospital amid intensified Israeli bombardment of the area.
The hospital, in Gaza’s Khan Younis city, stopped functioning last week after a week-long Israeli siege followed by a raid, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). The global health agency, along with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS), has so far managed to evacuate some 32 critical patients, including injured children and those with paralysis.
Jonathan Whittal, an OCHA official who took part in the evacuation missions on February 18 and 19, said patients at the hospital were in a “desperate situation” and were trapped without food, water and electricity.
“The conditions are appalling. There are dead bodies in the corridors,” he said. “This has become a place of death, not a place of healing.”
The rescue mission has previously said they had to navigate through pitch-black corridors with flashlights to find patients against a backdrop of gunfire. They had to arrive on foot because a deep, muddy ditch near the hospital has made roads near the site impassable.
“You can think about the worst situation ever. You multiply that by 10 and this is the worst situation I have seen in my life,” said Julio Martinez, a WHO staff. “It’s the debris, it’s the light – working in the darkness. Patients everywhere.”
According to Palestinian health authorities, at least eight patients have already died at the facility, mostly due to fuel a lack of fuel and oxygen. They say the lives of those remaining were directly threatened and accused Israeli forces of effectively converting the site into “military barracks”.
Chris Black, a WHO communications officer, said the entire neighbourhood around the hospital has been “damaged and destroyed”.
“The hospital itself has no electricity, has no food, has no water,” he added.
The WHO said some 130 severely injured patients and 15 medics remain at the site.
Despite the desperate situation, doctors and nurses at the hospital were pleading not for evacuation, but for the functions of the hospital to be restored, according to a former colleague of theirs.
“The last week has been miserable. It’s been a nightmare [for workers in the hospital]. The things they’re seeing are traumatising and they’re asking for some sort of help,” said Dr Thaer Ahmad, a United States-based emergency physician who spent several weeks volunteering at the Nasser Hospital in January.
“They’re asking, actually, not to be evacuated from the hospital but for the hospital to function. For the lights to be turned back on, for the medicine they need to treat the patients that remain,” he said.
“I spoke to one of the last surgeons remaining there, who sent a message to a group of physicians here in the US, and he asked us to advocate for the patients who are there. He told us, ‘I’m staring at patients, and they need my help, they need my care, and there’s nothing that I can do’,” added Ahmad.
The WHO said it was continuing efforts to evacuate further patients.
The agency, in a statement earlier this week, described the dismantling and degradation of the Nasser Hospital – the latest medical facility to become a theatre of war in the conflict between Israel and Hamas – as a “massive blow” to Gaza’s health system. It said the remaining facilities in the south were “already operating well beyond maximum capacity” and barely able to receive additional patients.
According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, at least 29,092 Palestinians, most of them women and children, have been killed in Israeli assaults since October 7, when Hamas launched a surprise attack inside southern Israel.
Some 1,139 people were killed in the Hamas attacks in Israel.
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There were an estimated 20 million new cancer cases in 2022, with more than 35 million new cases predicted by 2050.
The number of new cancer cases globally will reach 35 million in 2050, 77 percent higher than the figure in 2022, according to predictions from the World Health Organization’s cancer agency.
A survey conducted by the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) cited tobacco, alcohol, obesity and air pollution as key factors in the predicted rise.
“Over 35 million new cancer cases are predicted in 2050,” the IARC said in a statement, a 77 percent increase from the some 20 million cases diagnosed in 2022.
“Certainly the new estimates highlight the scale of cancer today and indeed the growing burden of cancer that is predicted over the next years and decades,” Freddie Bray, head of cancer surveillance at the IARC, told Al Jazeera on Thursday.
There were an estimated 9.7 million cancer deaths in 2022, the IARC said in the statement alongside its biannual report based on data from 185 countries and 36 cancers.
Around one in five people develop cancer in their lifetimes, with one in nine men and one in 12 women dying from the disease, it added.
“The rapidly-growing global cancer burden reflects both population ageing and growth, as well as changes to people’s exposure to risk factors, several of which are associated with socioeconomic development. Tobacco, alcohol and obesity are key factors behind the increasing incidence of cancer, with air pollution still a key driver of environmental risk factors,” the IARC said.
The IARC also highlighted that the threat of cancer varies depending on where a patient lives.
The most-developed countries are expected to record the greatest increases in case numbers, with an additional 4.8 million new cases predicted in 2050 compared with 2022 estimates, the agency said.
But in terms of percentages, countries on the low end of the Human Development Index (HDI) – used by the United Nations as a marker of societal and economic development – will see the greatest proportional increase, up 142 percent.
Meanwhile, countries in the medium range are predicted to record a 99-percent increase, it said.
“One of the biggest challenges we are seeing is the proportional increases in the cancer burden are going to be most striking in the lower income, lower human development countries,” Bray told Al Jazeera.
“They are going to see a projected increase of well over doubling of the burden by 2050.
“And these are very much the countries that currently are ill-equipped to really deal with the cancer problem. And it’s only going to get bigger and there are going to be more patients in cancer hospitals in the future.”
Bray said that although there are more than 100 different cancer types, the top five cancers account for about 50 percent of cases.
“Lung cancer is the most common cancer worldwide … particularly in men, whereas breast cancer is certainly the most common cancer in women,” he said.
The IARC also said different types of cancer were now increasingly affecting populations as lifestyles change. For example, colorectal cancer is now the third most common cancer and second in terms of deaths. Colorectal cancer is linked particularly to age as well as lifestyle factors like obesity, smoking and alcohol use.
“There should be a lot more investment in the early diagnosis and screening [of cancers]. There should be a lot more investment in preventing the disease,” as well as in palliative care for people who are suffering, Bray said.
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Chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says he hopes resolution will be starting point for further UN action on crisis.
The World Health Organization has agreed on a resolution, the first by any United Nations agency, calling for immediate access to vital humanitarian aid and an end to the fighting in Gaza.
The resolution – calling for the “immediate, sustained and unimpeded passage of humanitarian relief, including the access of medical personnel” – was adopted by consensus at the end of a special session of the WHO’s Executive Board on Sunday.
It also called on “all parties to fulfill their obligations under international law” and reaffirmed “that all parties to armed conflict must comply fully with the obligations applicable to them under international humanitarian law related to the protection of civilians in armed conflict and medical personnel.”
The special meeting of the executive board was only the seventh in the WHO’s 75-year history.
The passage of the resolution “underscores the importance of health as a universal priority, in all circumstances, and the role of healthcare and humanitarianism in building bridges to peace, even in the most difficult of situations,” the WHO said in a statement after the meeting.
The United Nations Security Council (UNSC) has struggled to respond to the deepening crisis in Gaza that erupted after the Palestinian armed group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel killing 1,200 people and taking more than 200 captive.
In response, Israel declared war on Hamas and has subjected Gaza, which Hamas has controlled since 2006, to relentless attack, killing at least 18,000 people.
The UN says about 80 percent of the population has been displaced and faces shortages of food, water and medicine along with a growing threat of disease.
On Friday, a resolution for a humanitarian ceasefire put forward by the United Arab Emirates and co-sponsored by 100 other countries failed to pass in the UNSC after the United States vetoed the proposal. The US is one of five permanent members of the council with a veto.
The vote came after UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres invoked Article 99 on Wednesday to formally warn the 15-member council of a global threat from the two-month-long war.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the UN health agency resolution could be a starting point for further action.
“It does not resolve the crisis. But it is a platform on which to build,” he said in his closing remarks to the board.
“Without a ceasefire, there is no peace. And without peace, there is no health. I urge all Member States, especially those with the most influence, to work with urgency to bring an end to this conflict as soon as possible.”
Fighting resumed this month after a week-long pause in hostilities that allowed some Israeli and foreign captives to be released in exchange for a number of Palestinians held in Israeli jails, as well as for the supply of humanitarian aid into Gaza.
With Israel now stepping up its military actions in the south of the territory of more than 2 million people, calls for an end to the fighting have intensified.
The UN General Assembly (UNGA) is expected to vote as soon as Tuesday on a resolution for an immediate ceasefire, after Egypt and Mauritania invoked Resolution 377 “Uniting for Peace” in the wake of the US veto.
Adopted by the UNGA in 1950, Resolution 377 allows the 193-member body to act where the UNSC has failed to “exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security”.
Their letter also referred to Guterres’s invoking Article 99 of the UN Charter on December 6.
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An online row has emerged between the World Health Organization (WHO) and Israel after the United Nations health body said the Israeli army ordered it to remove supplies from its warehouse in southern Gaza, a claim Israel then denied.
The “WHO received notification” from the Israeli forces “that we should remove our supplies from our medical warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put it beyond use”, its chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X on Monday.
Today, @WHO received notification from the Israel Defense Forces that we should remove our supplies from our medical warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put it beyond use.
We appeal to #Israel to withdraw the order, and take every possible…
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) December 4, 2023
He appealed to Israel to withdraw the order and take measures to protect infrastructure such as hospitals.
The Israeli army snapped back on Tuesday, saying it never issued such a warning. “The truth is that we didn’t ask you to evacuate the warehouses and we also made it clear [and in writing] to the relevant UN representatives,” COGAT, the Israeli defence ministry body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said on X.
“From a UN official we would expect, at least, to be more accurate,” it added.
“This is a social media row that is burning up and we can expect that it will continue to rumble on,” said Al Jazeera’s Alan Fisher, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem.
“We can see that the WHO did take this seriously to start moving stuff out of the warehouse,” our correspondent said, adding that the warehouse services 11 hospitals in southern Gaza, and there were concerns among UN officials that the removal of supplies could lead hospitals in the south to become even more overwhelmed.
“This has the possibility of growing into a bigger diplomatic row,” he noted.
The WHO, like other UN agencies, has repeatedly called on Israel to restrain its use of force to avoid targeting civilians and medical facilities in its military offensive in Gaza.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories, warned that an “even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond”, adding that “the conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist”.
Since the end of a seven-day truce, Israeli forces have pushed into southern Gaza, “forcing tens of thousands … into increasingly compressed spaces, desperate to find food, water, shelter and safety”, Hastings said in a statement. “Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go.”
After Hamas launched an assault in southern Israel on October 7 that killed more than 1,100 people, Israel has bombarded the Gaza Strip, killing more than 15,900 Palestinians, including 6,600 children. Entire neighbourhoods have been pulverised; about 1.9 million people, more than 80 percent of the population, fled their homes.
The WHO has recorded an unprecedented number of attacks on the strip’s healthcare system, including 203 on hospitals, ambulances, medical supplies, and the detention of healthcare workers.
After focusing most of its air and ground raids on northern Gaza for more than a month, the Israeli army announced over the weekend the expansion of its operations to the south following the collapse of the truce. The move spurred great concerns among health officials who fear a further deterioration of an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
“We are flooded with an influx of dead bodies,” Munir al-Bursh, the director general of Gaza’s Ministry of Health, told Al Jazeera on Monday, describing a collapsed healthcare system unable to cope with the needs of the population amid an acute shortage of staff and medical supplies.
Areas in the south are jammed with civilians who escaped bombardment in the north after heeding Israeli evacuation orders that indicated southern Gaza as a safe space. But as that area is now being heavily bombed and tanks are approaching the south’s main city of Khan Younis, civilians describe a great sense of fear and frustrations on where to go next.
The WHO issued a statement warning that intensifying military ground operations in Khan Younis “are likely to cut thousands off from healthcare, especially from the area’s two main hospitals, as the number of wounded and sick increases”.
In the south, thousands of people are now sheltering at the Nasser Medical Complex and another 70,000 at the 370-bed European Gaza Hospital, the UN agency estimates.
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