GENEVA: The UN’s health agency said Wednesday its workers will remain in Gaza City despite calls from Israel’s military for people to flee an assault it is mounting there.
“To civilians in Gaza: WHO and partners remain in Gaza City,” the World Health Organization said on its X account.
Israel’s army is intensifying its attacks on Gaza City — the main urban center in the besieged Gaza Strip — with the goal of seizing the city. This week, it warned civilians there to leave.
The UN estimates that around one million Palestinians live in and around Gaza City.
“WHO is appalled by the latest evacuation order,” the head of the UN agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on X.
He said the Israeli demand that the city’s one million people go to what Israel was calling a “humanitarian zone” in the south of the Gaza Strip was unfeasible.
“The zone has neither the size nor scale of services to support those already there, let alone new arrivals,” he said.
Tedros pointed out that half of the functioning hospitals left in the Gaza Strip were in Gaza City, and the territory’s “crippled health system cannot afford to lose any of these remaining facilities.”
He urged the international community to “act,” saying that, in Gaza, “this catastrophe is human-made, and the responsibility rests with us all.”
Israel has been waging offensive operations in Gaza since October 2023, following a deadly attack launched from there by Hamas that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
The UN has declared famine in parts of Gaza, which Israel contests.
WHO says to remain in Gaza City despite Israel’s call to leave
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WHO says to remain in Gaza City despite Israel’s call to leave
- “To civilians in Gaza: WHO and partners remain in Gaza City,” the World Health Organization said on its X account
2 US service members and one American civilian killed in ambush in Syria, US Central Command says
- The attack is the first to inflict casualties since the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago
DAMASCUS, Syria: Two US service members and one American civilian have been killed and three other people wounded in an ambush on Saturday by the Daesh group in central Syria, the US Central Command said.
The attack is the first to inflict casualties since the fall of Syrian President Bashar Assad a year ago.
Central Command said in a post on X that as a matter of respect for the families and in accordance with Department of War policy, the identities of the service members will be withheld until 24 hours after their next of kin have been notified.
Shots were fired at Syrian and US forces on Saturday during a visit by American troops to a historic central town, leaving several wounded, Syria’s state media and a war monitor said.
The shooting took place near Palmyra, according to the state-run SANA news agency, which said two members of Syria’s security force and several US service members were wounded. The injured were taken by helicopters to the Al-Tanf garrison near the border with Iraq and Jordan.
SANA said the attacker was killed, without providing further details.
A US defense official told The Associated Press that they are aware of the reports and did not have any information to provide immediately. The official spoke on condition of anonymity for not being authorized to speak to the media.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least three Syrian security members were wounded as well as several Americans. It added that the attacker was a member of the Syrian security force.
The US has hundreds of troops deployed in eastern Syria as part of a coalition fighting the Daesh group.
Last month, Syria joined the international coalition fighting against Daesh as Damascus improves its relations with Western countries following last year’s fall of President Bashar Assad when insurgents captured his seat of power in Damascus.
The US had no diplomatic relations with Syria under Assad, but ties have warmed since the fall of the five-decade Assad family rule. The interim president, Ahmad Al-Sharaa, made a historic visit to Washington last month where he held talks with President Donald Trump.
Daesh was defeated in Syria in 2019 but the group’s sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks in the country. The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.
US troops, which have maintained a presence in different parts of Syria — including Al-Tanf garrison in the central province of Homs — to train other forces as part of a broad campaign against Daesh, have been targeted in the past. One of the deadliest attacks occurred in 2019 in the northern town of Manbij when a blast killed two US service members and two American civilians as well as others from Syria while conducting a patrol.
