to report «iusnews»; World Health Organization leaders on Tuesday strongly condemned the Al-Ahli Hospital blast, calling it an attack “unprecedented in scale”.
In addition to caring for patients, the hospital had also been sheltering thousands of internally displaced people, the WHO said, according to CNN.
“We want to express our deepest grief at a horror, horror that has unfolded this evening at Al-Ahli hospital,” Dr. Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territories said in a news conference Tuesday.
“This attack is unprecedented in scale, but WHO has seen consistent attacks in health care in occupied Palestinian territory,” it added.
The WHO does not have specific casualty numbers yet from the hospital blast but said area reports indicate fatalities and injuries number in the hundreds.
“We are all deeply shocked by the events unfolding in Gaza this evening,” said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHO’s Health Emergencies Programme.
He added the locations of these hospitals is "absolutely clear".
“Healthcare is not a target. It should never be a target of anyone in conflict. That is enshrined in international humanitarian law and we’re seeing this breeched again, and again, and again over the last week and it has to stop,” Ryan said, adding, “It must stop. We cannot leave doctors and nurses to make the choices they’re having to make. It is inhuman.”
The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Tuesday that at least 500 people were killed in Israeli air raid on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza.
The hospital was one of 20 in the North of Gaza facing evacuation orders from the Israeli military, but the order has been “impossible” to carry out given the current security situation, and a lack of staff and ambulances, Dr. Ahmed Al-Mandhari, WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, said.
“WHO calls for the immediate active protection of civilians and health care,” Al-Mandhari said, adding, “International humanitarian law must be abided. By which means healthcare must be actively protected and never targeted.”
The WHO said even before the hospital blast there were more than 100 attacks on health care workers: 51 of them in Gaza with 15 health care workers killed on duty, 27 injured and 24 health facilities damaged.
The WHO Head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus also said that the situation in the besieged Gaza Strip “is spiralling out of control”.
“We need violence on all sides to stop,” he said on X, adding, “Every second we wait to get medical aid in, we lose lives. For four days, WHO supplies have been stuck at the border. We need immediate access to start delivering life-saving supplies.”
Human Rights Watch also said the attack on the Al-Ahli Hospital was “horrific beyond words” and called on world leaders to prevent further “large-scale atrocities” in Gaza.
“Hospitals have special protections. Unlawful attacks committed deliberately or recklessly are war crimes,” the rights group wrote on social media.
Meanwhile, Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said that the reported deaths of hundreds at a Gaza hospital were the “cost” of “unreserved support for Israel” from the US and European Union.
Callamard described the bombing of Al-Ahli Hospital as “horrific” in comments she posted on X soon after reports emerged of hundreds of patients and medical workers killed.
“This is the cost of the US and EU unreserved support for Israel: more civilians killed; more war crimes; more, more, more,” she said.
