Acting United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator Joyce Msuya confirmed that the Palestinians are suffering “horrors beyond description” in the besieged northern Gaza Strip, and spoke of the forcible displacement of tens of thousands.
“Horrific news from northern Gaza, where Palestinians are still suffering unspeakable horrors under the siege imposed by Israeli forces,” Msowya said on the X platform.
She added, “People in Jabalia are trapped under the rubble, and rescue personnel are prevented from reaching them.”
She continued, “Tens of thousands of Palestinians were forcibly displaced. Basic supplies also began to run out. Hospitals were struck, which became crowded with patients.”
The UN official stressed the need for “these atrocities to stop.”
She recalled that under international humanitarian law, civilians, the wounded and sick, healthcare workers and health facilities must be protected.
Earlier Saturday, The Ministry of Health in Gaza said that two patients at the Indonesian Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip died during the siege of the hospital by Israeli forces.
WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that the Indonesian hospital’s generator was hit, leading to a power outage and causing “the death of two critically ill patients.”
Ghebreyesus explained in a statement, “Hostile actions in the vicinity of hospitals could quickly put them out of service by compromising the ability to access them. We demand the loudest: health care must be protected.”
He added that the World Health Organization plans to send a mission to Kamal Adwan Hospital in the north on Sunday to deliver fuel, medical supplies, blood and food, and to transfer critically ill patients to Al-Shifa Hospital.
“It is necessary for Kamal Adwan and Al-Awda hospitals to remain operational,” Tedros continued, calling for safe and sustainable access for patients and health workers, and for an immediate ceasefire.
In turn, the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Affairs in the Palestinian Territories, Muhannad Hadi, said that over the past two weeks, Israeli forces have increased their pressure on the Indonesian Hospital and Al Awda Hospital “to evacuate them, but the patients have no other place to go.”
Hadi explained that since Friday, Israeli forces have not responded to the urgent request made by the United Nations to reach northern Gaza to help rescue “dozens of wounded trapped under the rubble,” and stressed that “every minute is important, and these delays are life-threatening.”
Collective punishment
For its part, Doctors Without Borders called on Israeli forces to “immediately stop their attacks on hospitals in northern Gaza.”
“This is simply collective punishment imposed on Palestinians in Gaza, who must choose between forced displacement from the north or murder. We fear that this will not stop,” said Anna Halford, MSF’s emergency coordinator in Gaza.
She added, “Israel’s allies bear a heavy responsibility for this miserable situation resulting from their steadfast support for the war.”
Since the sixth of this October, the occupation army has been waging a war of extermination against the northern Gaza Strip, committing horrific massacres by bombing homes and shelter centers, blowing up, destroying and burning entire residential neighborhoods, in addition to preventing the entry of food and water into the region, which left hundreds of martyrs and wounded in light of the disruption of… The work of ambulance and civil defense crews was almost complete as a result of being targeted by Israeli forces or prevented from performing their duties.
With American support, since October 7, 2023, Israel has been waging a genocidal war on Gaza that left more than 142,000 Palestinian martyrs and wounded – most of them children and women – and more than 10,000 missing, amid massive destruction and famine that killed dozens of children and the elderly, in one of the worst… Humanitarian disasters in the world.