Gaza mass casualty incidents WHO

More Gazans killed trying to get food, healthcare near to ‘full disaster’

Gaza’s health system is at breaking point, overwhelmed time and again by scores of patients killed or injured near aid distribution sites, the UN World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.

Speaking from the enclave, Dr Thanos Gargavanis, WHO trauma surgeon and emergency officer, told reporters in Geneva: “We are walking the fine grey line between operational capacity and full disaster, every day.”

Health services are “barely available” and difficult to access, he said, since more than 80 per cent of Gaza’s territory is under evacuation orders.

“The shrinking humanitarian space makes every health activity way more difficult than the previous day,” Dr Garavanis insisted.

WHO’s Representative in the occupied Palestinian territory, Dr Rik Peeperkorn, highlighted new reports on Tuesday morning of another mass casualty incident with “hundreds of casualties completely overwhelming Nasser Medical Complex” in Khan Younis, in the south of the Strip.

Nasser is the largest referral hospital in Gaza and the only remaining main hospital in Khan Younis, Dr Peeperkorn said. It is currently situated within the evacuation zone announced by Israeli forces on 12 June.

The nearby Al-Amal Hospital operated by the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) continues to provide services to patients already there, but it is unable to admit anyone else because of the ongoing military operations.

“It is what we call a completely minimal functional hospital,” Dr Peeperkorn said.

Only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are currently partially functional, medical supplies are critically low and no fuel has entered the Strip for more than 100 days.

As details of the latest mass casualty event continued to come in, the WHO representative highlighted the frequency of such incidents as desperate Gazans try to access aid.

On Monday, more than 200 patients had arrived at the Red Cross Field Hospital in Al Mawasi - the highest number received by the facility in one single mass casualty incident. Of that number, 28 patients were reportedly declared dead. Just one day prior, on 15 June, the same hospital received at least 170 patients, who reportedly had been trying to access a food distribution site.

WHO’s Dr Gargavanis warned that “the recent food distribution initiatives by non-UN actors every time result in mass casualty incidents”.

Since late May, the UN and humanitarian partners have been sidelined in Gaza as a new aid distribution model backed by Israel and the United States began operations under the framework of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which uses private military contractors, according to media reports.

The WHO trauma surgeon highlighted a “constant correlation” between the locations of food distribution spots and the mass casualty incidents in Rafah, in Khan Younis and along the Netzarim corridor.

Asked about the type of injuries sustained by those seeking aid, and who is responsible, Dr Garavanis stressed that WHO is not a forensic agency.

“We're not in a position to clearly identify from the nature of the injury” who has caused it, he said. “What we can say, though, is that we're talking of gunshot wound injuries, and we're talking of very few incidents of shrapnel injuries.”

The UN has repeatedly warned that the new aid distribution system is not in line with humanitarian principles of humanity, impartiality, independence and neutrality. The global body has also called for aid restrictions to be lifted.

Dr Peeperkorn insisted that WHO must be facilitated to move supplies into Gaza in a cost-effective manner “via all possible routes” to prevent further shutdowns of medical services. He said that 33 WHO trucks with supplies are waiting at Al Arish in Egypt to be granted passage into the enclave, with another 15 standing by in the occupied West Bank.

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Gaza mass casualty incidents WHO

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