The Israeli occupation forces killed 364 health workers and arrested 269 others, including hospital directors in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza, during 150 days of relentless aggression, Ashraf Al-Qudra, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Health in Gaza, said on Monday.
The occupation forces also destroyed 155 health facilities, and rendered 32 hospitals and 53 health centers inoperable, in addition to damaging 126 ambulances.
Also on Monday, the ministry announced that the death toll from the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip since 7 October had risen to 30,534, and the number of injured had reached 71,920, after the occupation carried out 13 massacres against civilians in the Gaza Strip in the past 24 hours, killing 124 and injuring 210.
Al-Qudra said that the occupation forces had demolished the infrastructure of hospitals in Khan Yunis and northern Gaza, and reduced them to medical posts, adding that the health situation was extremely dire and indescribable, and was deteriorating and collapsing due to the lack of essential medical supplies.
He emphasized that the Israeli occupation had deliberately inflicted a horrific humanitarian and health disaster, which had led to the outbreak of epidemics and infectious diseases, reporting that about one million cases of infectious diseases had been detected, without the necessary medical resources to treat them.
He said that the residents of northern Gaza were facing death as a result of a famine that had surpassed any global standards due to the shortage of drinking water and food, which had claimed the lives of dozens of children, women, and elderly people so far. He appealed to the United Nations to implement international humanitarian law to protect civilians, institutions, and health teams, and to provide a means of survival for the people of the Gaza Strip to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe.
Meanwhile, US Vice President Kamala Harris called for an “immediate ceasefire” in the Gaza Strip and to exert strong pressure on Israel to increase the flow of aid to ease what she described as “inhumane” conditions and a “humanitarian catastrophe” among the Palestinian people.
Harris’s remarks are among the strongest yet from senior officials in the US administration who have urged Israel to alleviate the situation in Gaza.
On the ground, the Al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), announced on its Telegram account that it had captured two occupation drones that were on an intelligence mission in the camp area west of the city of Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip.
Al-Qassam also announced that its fighters had blown up four Israeli tanks and two military bulldozers with Al-Yassin 105 shells in the Al-Amal neighborhood in the Gaza Strip. The Brigades said that its fighters had attacked an Israeli force that was hiding in a house in the neighborhood, killing and injuring some of its members. They also sniped two Israeli soldiers from close range in the Al-Amal neighborhood and killed them.
However, Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad Movement, announced that it had shelled a gathering of Israeli occupation forces with a volley of mortar shells in the Al-Zinna area, east of the city of Khan Yunis.
