Gaza Strip Ministry of Health spokesman Ashraf al-Kidra said today that the second largest hospital in Gaza is no longer functioning.
“There are only four medics currently caring for patients at Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Yunis,” a spokesman told Reuters.
Al-Kidra added that the Nasser Medical Complex is “the backbone of health care in the south of the Gaza Strip,” and that the shutdown is “a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced in Khan Yunis and Rafah.”
He explained that that hospital, the largest that was functioning until today, stopped working because of the lack of fuel and the fighting around it.
The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said earlier that the Nasser Hospital was not functioning due to the seven-day siege and subsequent invasion by the Israeli army.
He announced to the “X” platform that there are about 200 patients in the hospital, including 20 who should be urgently transferred to another place for treatment.
“The price of the delay will be paid with the lives of the patients. Access to the patients and the hospital should be enabled,” he added.
The Israeli army said soldiers entered the hospital on Thursday because they had “credible intelligence” that the hostages who were kidnapped on October 7 in southern Israel were inside.
The United Nations criticized the incursion, and medics said Thursday that the hospital had been hit directly by a tank.
The electricity supply was interrupted and the generators stopped working after the army incursion, as a result of which six patients died because there was no oxygen, the Ministry of Health in the Gaza Strip stated.
