GENEVA: Palestinian officials have told WHO that it would be impossible to move vulnerable hospital patients to the southern Gaza Strip, the UN health body said Friday.
Israel has given Palestinians 24 hours to leave the northern Gaza Strip ahead of an expected ground offensive in retaliation against Hamas for the deadliest attack in Israeli history.
The two major hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip had already exceeded their combined 760-bed capacity, "and the hospitals in the south of Gaza are overflowing", WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic told reporters in Geneva.
"There are severely ill people whose injuries mean their only chances of survival is being on life support, such as mechanical ventilators[...] So moving those people is a death sentence. Asking health workers to do so is beyond cruel," said Jasarevic
"With ongoing airstrikes, civilians have no safe place left to go. The Palestinian Ministry of Health has informed WHO that is impossible to evacuate vulnerable hospital patients from the north of Gaza," the WHO spokesperson added.
Jasarevic said the health system in the Gaza Strip was now at "breaking point", with six of the seven main hospitals in Gaza only partially functioning.
"WHO joins the wider United Nations in appealing to Israel to immediately rescind orders for the evacuation within the next 24 hours of 1.1 million people living north of Wadi Gaza, and an end to hostilities and violence in the Gaza Strip, where unimaginable human suffering is unfolding," the spokesman said.
Concern is rising over the worsening humanitarian crisis in the long-blockaded Palestinian enclave, where Israel has now imposed a total siege, cutting off water, food and energy supplies.
"Time is running out to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe if fuel, water, food and life-saving health and humanitarian supplies cannot be urgently delivered to the Gaza Strip amidst the complete blockade," said Jasarevic.
The WHO said it stood ready to bring medical supplies into the Gaza Strip once it is able to do so.
"We have our logistics hub in Dubai and we are ready to move as soon as we get a signal," Jasarevic said.