Palestine Red Crescent Society & WHO claims that Israeli occupation forces are responsible for miserable health conditions in Gaza.
Negotiators from Hamas, Qatar and Egypt — but not Israel — are in Cairo trying to secure a 40-day ceasefire in the war between Israel and the Islamist group in time for the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which begins early next week.
“We are showing the required flexibility in order to reach a comprehensive cessation of aggression against our people, but the occupation is still evading the entitlements of this agreement,” Hamas said in a statement.
The deal presented to Hamas would free some hostages captured by Palestinian militants in the Oct. 7 on Israel which sparked the war, while aid to Gaza would be increased to try to avert famine as hospitals treat acutely malnourished children, and Hamas would provide a list of all the hostages held in Gaza.
Meanwhile the Palestine Red Crescent Society says that the Israeli occupation forces have committed 427 violations against its medical missions operating in the occupied West Bank since Oct 7, Al Jazeera reports.
Under international law, Israel as an occupying power must facilitate the humanitarian mission of medical teams, the organisation said in a post on X.
An estimated 8,000 patients need evacuation out of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organisation has said, voicing frustration that few have so far been transferred outside the besieged territory.
Ten-year-old Palestinian boy, Yazan al-Kafarneh, displaced from Beit Hanun and suffering from a pre-existing condition, lies on a hospital bed at Al-Awda clinic in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip on February 29, 2024, amid ongoing battles between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement. AFP FILE PIC
The WHO said moving such patients out of Gaza would relieve some of the strain on the medics and hospitals that are struggling to keep functioning in the besieged enclave.
“We estimate that 8,000 Gazans need to be referred outside Gaza,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, told a press briefing in Geneva via video-link from Jerusalem.
Of those, an estimated 6,000 are related to the conflict, including patients with multiple trauma injuries, burns and amputations, he said.
The other 2,000 are regular patients, he said, noting that before the conflict began, 50 to 100 patients a day were referred from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, of which around half were cancer patients.
Peeperkorn said that 23 out of 36 hospitals in the Gaza Strip were not functioning, with the rest only partially or minimally operational.
