UNITED NATIONS, US: The health care system in the Gaza Strip is “on its knees,” the head of the World Health Organization warned Friday, noting that half of the territory’s 36 hospitals are no longer functioning.
Speaking to the Security Council, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described the situation on the ground as desperate: “Hospital corridors crammed with the injured, the sick, the dying; morgues overflowing; surgery without anesthesia; tens of thousands of displaced people sheltering at hospitals.”
“The health system is on its knees, and yet somehow is continuing to deliver lifesaving care,” he said.
Tedros said there had been more than 250 attacks on health care — such as strikes on hospitals, clinics, ambulances and patients — in Gaza and the West Bank, and 25 such attacks in Israel in the conflict triggered by Hamas’s shock October 7 assault.
“The best way to support those health workers and the people they serve is by giving them the tools they need to deliver that care — medicines, medical equipment and fuel for hospital generators,” he said, calling for an increase in aid trickling in through the Rafah crossing with Egypt and repeating the UN’s call for a cease-fire.
“I understand what the children of Gaza must be going through, because as a child, I went through the same thing,” said the WHO chief, who is from Ethiopia’s Tigray region.
“The sound of gunfire and shells whistling through the air; the smell of smoke after they struck; tracer bullets in the night sky; the fear; the pain; the loss — these things have stayed with me throughout my life.”
He also denounced the “horrific, barbaric and unjustifiable attacks” carried out by Hamas fighters, and demanded the release of hostages held by the militant group.
The head of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, Marwan Jilani, addressed the Security Council by video, calling on members to “do all you can to spare further deaths and sufferings.” The council is divided on the war and has failed to issue a resolution on it.
He highlighted the dire situation at the Al-Quds hospital in Gaza City, which the Red Crescent said was fired on Friday by Israeli snipers.
“Our utmost concern is the direct threat to the lives of all those wounded and sick, together with tens of thousands of civilians, including thousands of children,” Jilani said.
“They are looking at you, imploring you to act to stop another possible massacre unfolding.”
The Security Council started its meeting with a minute of silence to honor the victims of the Hamas assault, the civilians killed in Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza, as well as the journalists and UN personnel who have died in the war.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said that its teams in recent days had distributed critical supplies to medical structures across Gaza, and had seen “horrendous images that have now gotten worse due to sharpened hostilities.”
This was severely affecting hospitals and ambulances and taking a heavy toll on civilians, patients, and medical staff, it said in a statement.
“Overstretched, running on thin supplies and increasingly unsafe, the health care system in Gaza has reached a point of no return.”
Medical facilities and personnel across Gaza have repeatedly come under attack since Israel’s war with Hamas erupted just over a month ago.
Such attacks have dealt “a heavy blow to the health care system in Gaza, which is severely weakened after more than one month of heavy fighting,” ICRC said.
“The destruction affecting hospitals in Gaza is becoming unbearable and needs to stop,” William Schomburg, head of the ICRC sub-delegation in Gaza, said in Friday’s statement.
“The lives of thousands of civilians, patients and medical staff are at risk.”
The ICRC pointed out that children’s hospitals had not been spared from the violence, including the Al Nasser Hospital, which had been heavily damaged by hostilities and Al Rantisi Hospital, which had been forced to cease operations.
“Our partner the Palestine Red Crescent Society or PRCS, has been working relentlessly to continue operating the Al-Quds Hospital, as it desperately runs out of the necessary means amidst increasing hostilities,” it said.
Gaza’s largest hospital, Al-Shifa, which was hit by a strike on Friday, is meanwhile not only overwhelmed with patients but also now hosting thousands of displaced families.
“Any military operation around hospitals must consider the presence of civilians, who are protected under international humanitarian law,” ICRC said.
“The rules of war are clear. Hospitals are specially protected facilities under international humanitarian law,” it said.
The protection of civilians, including humanitarian workers and medical personnel, “is not only a legal obligation but a moral imperative to preserve human life in these terrible times.”
Gaza’s health system ‘on its knees,’ WHO chief warns
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Gaza’s health system ‘on its knees,’ WHO chief warns
- The rules of war are clear. Hospitals are specially protected facilities under international humanitarian law
Israel says it has launched ‘broad wave’ of strikes on Iran, as Tehran widens its response across the region
- US military says 17 Iranian navy ships destroyed, struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran thus far
- US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran: Iranian Red Crescent
JERUSALEM/DUBAI/TEHRAN: Israel early Wednesday launched new attacks on Iran as the US military said it has hit nearly 2,000 targets inside the Islamic republic, which tried to impose a cost by expanding a missile and drone barrage across the region.
With global energy prices on the rise, President Donald Trump said the US Navy was ready to escort oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz, the vital chokepoint into the Gulf that Iran has threatened to seal off.
Israel’s military said it launched a “broad wave of strikes” after midnight across Iran, which in the hours before had launched three separate missile barrages at Israel, causing mild injuries to a woman in Tel Aviv.
The US military has destroyed 17 Iranian ships, including a submarine, and struck nearly 2,000 targets in Iran, the commander of the US Central Command said on Tuesday.
“Today, there is not a single Iranian ship underway in the Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz, or Gulf of Oman,” US Central Command’s Brad Cooper said in a video posted to X.
Cooper said the US military has “severely degraded Iran’s air defenses” and taken out hundreds of ballistic missiles, launchers and drones.
The video showed missiles and jets launching from US ships, and targets exploding on the ground.
Cooper noted that Iran has launched over 500 ballistic missiles and more than 2,000 drones in retaliation.
But he said the US is “hunting” Iran’s last remaining mobile ballistic missile launchers to eliminate their “lingering launch capability.”
Cooper said the operation has involved more than 50,000 troops, 200 fighter jets, two aircraft carriers and bombers, and “more capability is on the way.”
“We’ve just begun,” Cooper said, adding that the US military is targeting “all the things that can shoot at us.”
“These forces bring a massive amount of firepower, representing the largest buildup by the US in the Middle East in a generation,” he said in the video message, describing the first day’s barrage as bigger than the so-called “shock and awe” against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in 2003.
Iran‘s response
The US and Israeli attacks have killed 787 people in Iran, according to the Iranian Red Crescent, a toll that could not be independently confirmed.
Iran vowed to inflict a heavy price in retaliation. Drones struck adjacent the US consulate in Dubai, starting a fire but inflicting no casualties, and against the US military base at Al-Udeid in Qatar.
The attacks came a day after strikes on the US embassies in Riyadh and Kuwait City and on a US air base in Bahrain.
“We are saying to the enemy that if it decides to hit our main centers, we will hit all economic centers in the region,” Islamic Revolutionary Guard General Ebrahim Jabbari said.
Iranian attacks have killed at least nine people and wounded dozens in the Gulf region, according to various reports quoting local authorities.
Among the latest death was an 11-year-old girl who was killed after shrapnel fell in a residential area in Kuwait City, health authorities said Wednesday.
The Kuwait army said in a statement the shrapnel fell over a house and left casualties while forces were intercepting “several hostile aerial targets” over the country.
The Health Ministry said in a separate statement that the child died of her wounds at the hospital.
The child’s mother and three other relatives were injured and being treated at the hospital, it said.
Vessel hit in Gulf of Oman
A vessel was hit by a projectile early Wednesday in the Gulf of Oman off the United Arab Emirates, an agency of the UK military said.
There were no reported casualties.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations Center said the vessel was struck 8 miles east of Fujairah, one of the UAE’s seven emirates.
The attack damaged the vessel’s steel plating.
No fire or water intake was reported, it said.
Iran hits US embassies
The US State Department said Tuesday it’s preparing military and charter flights for Americans who want to leave the Middle East. Several other countries also arranged evacuation flights for their citizens.
An attack from two drones on the US Embassy in Riyadh caused a “limited fire,” according to the Saudi Arabian Defense Ministry, and the embassy urged Americans to avoid the compound.
An Iranian drone struck a parking lot outside the US consulate in Dubai, sparking a small fire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in Washington. He said all personnel were accounted for.
The United Arab Emirates said it has intercepted the vast majority of more than 1,000 Iranian missile and drone attacks against it.
US embassies in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Lebanon said they were closed to the public.
The US State Department ordered the evacuation of non-emergency personnel and family in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates. And US citizens were urged to leave more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, though many were stranded because of airspace closures.
The US military has confirmed six deaths of American service members.
Four of the American soldiers killed were identified as Capt. Cody A. Khork, 35, of Winter Haven, Florida; Sgt. 1st Class Noah L. Tietjens, 42, of Bellevue, Nebraska; Sgt. 1st Class Nicole M. Amor, 39, of White Bear Lake, Minnesota; and Sgt, Declan J. Coady, 20, of West Des Moines, lowa, who received a posthumous promotion in rank. They were assigned to the Iowa-based 103rd Sustainment Command.
Ghost town
In Tehran, residents who have not fled remained shut away in their homes for fear of the US-Israeli bombardment.
The Iranian capital is normally home to around 10 million people, but in recent days “there are so few people that you’d think no one ever lived here,” said Samireh, a 33-year-old nurse.
Authorities had previously urged people to leave the city, and police officers, armed security forces and armored vehicles have been stationed at main junctions, carrying out random checks on vehicles.
In the more upmarket north of Tehran, the meowing of cats and chirping of birds replaced the usual din of traffic jams.
Iranian authorities said a strike on a school in the city of Minab on the first day of the war killed more than 150 people.
