The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that Gaza’s hospitals are on the “brink of collapse” as the Israeli military’s ground invasion pushes deeper into the besieged enclave.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on Thursday that the Israeli assault, currently centred on Gaza City, is “driving new waves of displacement, forcing traumatised families into an ever-shrinking area unfit for human dignity”.
Israeli tanks and warplanes pounded Gaza City on Thursday, prompting long lines of scared Palestinian civilians to flee as the military intensified its assault.
Internet and phone lines were cut off across the enclave, in a sign that ground operations were likely to escalate.
The military continued to focus fire on parts of the city that suggest an imminent advance on central and western areas, where most of the population is sheltering.
“The injured and people with disabilities cannot move to safety, which puts their lives in grave danger,” Tedros said. “We call for an immediate end to these inhumane conditions. We call for a ceasefire.”
At least 14 people were killed by Israeli attacks on Thursday morning, including nine in Gaza City, hospital officials told Al Jazeera.
By early afternoon, at least 29 Palestinians were reported to have been killed across the enclave since dawn, including 19 in the city.
Reporting from Nuseirat in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hani Mahmoud said only two hospitals in the enclave’s largest city, al-Shifa and al-Ahli, remain partially functional.
“As the Israeli military advances its tanks and armoured vehicles, there is close to a total siege on Gaza City with acute shortages of medical supplies in the two still-operating health facilities,” he said.
“While these health centres are still operating somehow, they are barely offering the basic medical intervention needed. Inside the emergency wards, there are more people injured than beds available.”
Exhausted staff and dwindling supplies have left the hospitals highly vulnerable, he continued.
“The fear now is that as the Israeli military’s ground offensive advances further, these facilities are going to be cut off from the outside world.”
‘Cataclysmic’
The United Nations said the offensive has forced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians south, deepening an already catastrophic humanitarian crisis.
Olga Cherevko, spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, told Al Jazeera that conditions are “nothing short of cataclysmic”.
“There is a constant stream of people making their way from the north, with many walking the 22km [14 miles] to the al-Mawasi ‘humanitarian zone’ – as labelled by Israel – on foot,” she said.
“The hygiene conditions are so dire that, of course, they lead to a massive spread of diseases, skin rashes and all sorts of public health crises.”
Displaced Palestinians described unbearable living conditions amid an ongoing genocide.
“We were searching all over for a decent place where we can stay, but that costs money to rent a small piece of land. We can’t afford that,” Rachid Abdel Latif Shaaban told Al Jazeera from a makeshift encampment in the central city of Deir el-Balah. “All around us is nothing but garbage, sewage, all kinds of pollution, bacteria and germs.”
Another displaced woman, Ayesha Abu Ghof, told Al Jazeera that she and her children had been forced to live on a landfill. “All our children are sick and suffer from diseases, and there are no doctors around, no medicine,” she said.
‘Concern’
Israel’s ongoing assault and the terrible conditions being endured by Palestinians continue to provoke international concern, but there has been little agreement among Western countries on how to intervene.
Spain is among Israel’s fiercest critics. On Thursday Madrid announced it would support the International Criminal Court’s ongoing investigation into alleged Israeli war crimes.
Attorney General Alvaro Garcia Ortiz said the probe would examine whether “serious violations” of international law had taken place during the war, which has now run for nearly two years.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health reported on Thursday that Israeli attacks had killed at least 79 people and wounded 228 in the latest 24-hour reporting period, bringing the total death toll since the start of the war in October 2023 to 65,141 and the number of wounded to 165,925.
