WHO: Destruction of Gaza’s Shifa Hospital Rips Heart Out of Health System

Date: 02 April 2024 - 21:18

News ID: ۱۲۵۸۴۳

GENEVA (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s destruction of Gaza’s biggest hospital in a raid over the past two weeks has ripped the heart out of the enclave’s healthcare system, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
Zionist troops left al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City on Monday after the two-week carnage by regime troops, who detained hundreds of suspected Palestinian fighters and left a wasteland of destroyed buildings. The occupying regime said it killed hundreds of Hamas fighters who had based themselves there; Hamas and medical staff deny fighters were present.
“We’ve had contact with the staff. The directors told us that al-Shifa Hospital is gone. It’s no longer able to function in any shape or form as a hospital,” said WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris.
“Destroying al-Shifa means ripping the heart out of the health system.”
The WHO is hoping to send a mission to the site to see what it can do to save the lives of the remaining patients. Harris said she did not have information about whether Israel had granted permission to carry out such a mission.
“We’ve been trying to go for days and days and days,” she said. “Most of our missions were rejected.”
Al-Shifa, the Gaza Strip’s biggest hospital before the war, was one of the few healthcare facilities that had been partially operational in the north of enclave before the raid.
Palestinian officials called the assault on a hospital treating severely wounded patients a war crime.
Meanwhile, Japan on Tuesday said it will lift its suspension of funding to the UN Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA) as the relief body works to regain trust after an allegation that some of its staff were involved in the Oct. 7 operation by Palestinian resistance movements on Israel.
Japan, the sixth-biggest donor to the agency, and 15 other countries paused about $450 million in funding following the allegation by Israel in January, throwing the agency’s operations in the war-torn Gaza Strip into turmoil.
Countries including Australia and Canada have since restored funding to the UNRWA, the largest relief body operating in Gaza, which has been besieged by Israel since the attack.
Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who met UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini in Tokyo last week, said the agency’s role in addressing the Gaza crisis was “indispensable” even as it works to improve governance and manage risks.
“Japan will lift the moratorium on its financial contributions to UNRWA and provide assistance while ensuring and confirming the appropriateness of Japan’s funds,” Kamikawa told reporters, adding that about $35 million of originally planned funding was ready to be released.