News - Middle East: The WHO chief has described the situation in the northern Gaza Strip as “catastrophic.”

“The situation in northern Gaza is catastrophic,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

The United Nations top medic warned that “a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life-saving care.”

The situation in northern #Gaza is catastrophic. Intensive military operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities and a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care.

The Health Ministry in… pic.twitter.com/HIlqfD27uT

— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) October 26, 2024
"The whole health system in Gaza has been under attack for over a year", he added, referring to the start of the Israeli regime's genocidal war on Gaza on October 7, 2023.

He pointed out that medical staff’s safety must be respected and protected in all circumstances, accusing the regime forces of violating international laws by attacking northern Gaza’s hospitals.

"WHO cannot stress loudly enough that hospitals must be shielded from conflict at all times," he said, stressing that "any attack on healthcare facilities is a violation of international humanitarian law."

The WHO chief stressed the urgency to establish a ceasefire to save what medical facilities remained in northern Gaza.  

"The only path to safeguarding what remains of Gaza's collapsing health care system is an immediate and unconditional ceasefire," he emphasized.

Israelis committing harrowing massacres in north Gaza

The Ministry of Health in Gaza reported that the northern Gaza Strip is facing a war of extermination and ethnic cleansing for the 23rd consecutive day as Israeli forces continue their intensified attacks.

Forty Palestinians were killed and 80 more injured in an Israeli airstrike on a residential area in Beit Lahia, the Ministry reported on Sunday.

Northern Gaza’s city of Beit Lahia has been among the worst-hit areas in past weeks.

The Ministry indicated that the Israeli forces had effectively rendered the healthcare system in northern Gaza inoperable in the regime's plan to maximize the number of Palestinians being killed in Gaza.

The Israeli war machine launched the genocidal war on the besieged Gaza Strip after the Palestinian Hamas resistance group carried out a retaliatory operation against the occupying entity in response to the regime’s decades-long atrocities against the Palestinian people.

Since then, it has killed more than 42,900, according to Gaza Health Ministry. In addition, 100,833 Palestinians have also been injured till now in the ongoing Israeli attacks on Gaza, according to the Ministry.

So far, all UN resolutions calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza have been vetoed by the US, the Israelis' main international backer.

Press TV