UN rights chief Volker Turk has described the horror unfolding in the north of Gaza as the “darkest moment” of Israel's war on Gaza, warning Friday that it could amount to “atrocity crimes”.
“More than 150,000 people are reportedly dead, wounded or missing in Gaza, and the situation is getting worse by the day,” he said.
“My gravest fear is, given the intensity, breadth, scale and blatant nature of the Israeli operation currently underway in North Gaza, that number will rise dramatically.”
The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights warned that Israel’s campaign in northern Gaza—which some observers see as an implementation of something called 'The General's Plan'— “risk emptying the area of all Palestinians”.
At the time of this article's publishing, the Israeli siege of north Gaza had entered its 23rd day, with no food, water or fuel entering at all.
Israel’s army has reduced North Gaza to rubble and is now creating an environment in which it would be impossible for any human or even animal to live. Snipers and tanks shoot at every moving object. Those who do not obey evacuation orders face being killed. Medics in the few hospitals still operating say they cannot reach the injured, and the injured cannot reach the hospital. This is despite the huge numbers who have been wounded and traumatised.
It appears that the Israelis are now targeting what is left of the north’s health system. One nurse recently told the BBC that Israeli bombs even blew up the water tank on top of their hospital building. The director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, one of the largest in the Gaza Strip—has said his team can no longer offer services to the injured—having earlier appealed for the opening of safe corridors so that much-needed supplies could enter before it was too late.
Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, the hospital director, said in a video that Israeli tanks and bulldozers entered the hospital compound late Thursday and began firing at parts of the complex, adding that “all departments of the hospital are under direct shelling.”
“Instead of receiving aid, we are receiving tanks,” he said.
The Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, Hussam Abu Safiya, said, “We expected humanitarian aid to arrive, but all we received were Israeli occupation tanks,” following today’s Israeli raid of the hospital, which is considered one of the few remaining functioning medical facilities... pic.twitter.com/Lp6zIE5N0r
— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) October 25, 2024
On Friday, the Israeli army raided the hospital, ransacking it and detaining 44 medical staff and killing the teenage son of the hospital director Abu Safiya. After losing contact with the staff for most of the day, World Health Organisation Director-General Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus later said that three health workers and another employee had been injured and 44 detained (their whereabouts still unknown), with four ambulances damaged.
Kamal Adwan “is still under siege, but we managed to get in touch with the staff”, Dr Tedros said , after an earlier post about losing communication with the staff. He said the WHO and partner agencies had reached the hospital late on Wednesday night and transferred 23 patients and 26 caregivers to the Palestinian territory's main Al Shifa Hospital.
The situation in northern #Gaza is catastrophic. Intensive military operations unfolding around and within healthcare facilities and a critical shortage of medical supplies, compounded by severely limited access, are depriving people of life saving care.
The Health Ministry in... pic.twitter.com/HIlqfD27uT
— Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (@DrTedros) October 26, 2024
But with the detention of most of the medical staff, only three staffers (not doctors) were left to run the barely functioning hospital—the only one currently in operation in the north. On Friday, the UN special rapporteur on health used a new term— medicide—to describe the widespread and systematic attacks by Israel on healthcare workers and facilities.
‘The smell of death’
Nothing and nowhere is safe in northern Gaza. Acting UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, Joyce Msuya described its people as enduring “unspeakable horrors”. UNRWA Commissioner-General Phillippe Lazzarini said people in this part of Gaza were now “waiting to die”. He added that “the smell of death is everywhere as bodies are left lying on the roads or under the rubble”.
North Gaza, an area of 61 sq km close to the Israeli border, contains the cities of Beit Hanoun, Beit Lahia and the Jabalia refugee camp. It is the largest of the five governorates that make the Gaza Strip. Before Israel retaliated after 7 October 2023, it was home to around 500,000 Palestinians, almost a quarter of the Gaza Strip’s total population.
Today, it has been reduced to heaps of smashed brick and mortar. Those who have survived the onslaught have had to flee yet again. Some returned to what remained of their homes in North Gaza two months ago, but they have been living under a tight Israeli siege since the beginning of October. Those venturing out onto the streets face being shot.
