GAZA: Fighting, fuel shortages and Israeli raids put the Gaza Strip's second-largest hospital completely out of service on Sunday, local and U.N. health officials said, as Israel struck in the devastated Palestinian enclave.
The latest blow to Gaza's destroyed healthcare sector came as Israel prepared for an assault of the southernmost city Rafah, home now to more than a million mostly displaced Palestinians - a move that the international community has warned would create enormous human suffering.
Israel's air and ground offensive has devastated much of Gaza and forced nearly all of its inhabitants from their homes. Palestinian health authorities say 28,985 people, mostly civilians, have been killed.
Gaza's hospitals have been a focal point of the four-month-old war between Israel and Palestinians.
The Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis went out of action early on Sunday, Gaza health ministry spokesperson Ashraf al-Qidra said.
It still sheltered scores of patients suffering from war wounds and Gaza's worsening health crisis, but there was no power and not enough staff to treat them all, health officials said.
"It's gone completely out of service. There are only four medical teams - 25 staff - currently caring for patients inside the facility," he said.
Qidra said water supply to the hospital had halted because generators had been out of action for three days, sewage was flooding emergency rooms and the remaining staff had no way of treating intensive care patients.
A lack of oxygen supplies - also a result of having no power - had caused the deaths of at least seven patients, he said.
Most of Gaza's hospitals have been put out of action by fighting and lack of fuel, leaving a population of 2.3 million without proper healthcare.
The international community says hospitals, which are protected under international law, must be protected.
The World Health Organization urged Israel to grant its staff access to the hospital, where it said a week-long siege and raids by Israeli forces searching for Palestinian fighters had stopped them from helping patients.
"Both yesterday and the day before, the WHO team was not permitted to enter the hospital to assess the conditions of the patients and critical medical needs, despite reaching the hospital compound to deliver fuel," WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on social media platform X.
Israel's assault on Gaza began in the north and has moved south as Palestinians have fled, many crammed into tents around southern cities including Khan Younis and Rafah. — Reuters
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