DUBAI: The World Health Organisation (WHO) head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus on Monday reiterated calls for a ceasefire in Gaza and expressed particular concern at Israeli attacks on Rafah where most of the enclave’s inhabitants have fled.
Israeli airstrikes overnight killed 48 people in Rafah, local health authorities said.
Ghebreyesus said only 15 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza were “still partially or minimally functioning” and that aid workers were doing their best in impossible circumstances.
Speaking at the World Government Summit in Dubai, he said the WHO, the UN’s health agency, continued to call for safe access for humanitarian personnel and supplies, for Hamas to release hostages, and for a ceasefire.
Israel’s four-month war in Gaza has killed more than 28,000 people, say health authorities in the enclave. The UN has said more than 85% of Gazans have been displaced and that Gaza faces famine, with one in five children under five acutely malnourished.
Last week, Israel said it planned to assault Rafah, the last relatively safe place in the enclave, to which more than one million displaced people had fled, camping on the street, in empty lots and on the beach.
“I am especially concerned by the recent attacks on Rafah where the majority of Gaza’s population has fled the destruction,” he said.
“So far, we have delivered 447 metric tons of medical supplies to Gaza, but it’s a drop in the ocean of need, which continues to grow every day,” he said.
At least 37 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes on the southern city of Rafah, according to Gaza health officials.
Twenty Palestinians bodies are at the Kuwaiti hospital, 12 at the European hospital, and 5 at the Abu Youssef Al-Najar Hospital, the health officials told Reuters.
United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) chief said that they were facing growing administrative hurdles from Tel Aviv as a shipment amounting to a month’s supply of food was blocked at Ashdod port in Israel.
“We have an environment here which is for the time being quite hostile to the agency, but there have been some decisions now which are starting to impact the ability of the agency to properly operate,” Al Jazeera quoted UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini as saying.
In a recent call between President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the White House released a read-out emphasising Biden’s stance on the Rafah military operation, Al Jazeera reported.
According to a statement by the White House, the POTUS reiterated that: “A military operation in Rafah should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for more than one million people sheltering there”.
Additionally, the read-out mentioned Biden stressing the importance of capitalising on progress in negotiations for the prompt release of all hostages.
This communication comes amid Netanyahu’s acknowledgement that he had not spoken with Biden since the US president’s comment about Israel going “over the top” with actions in Gaza.
King Abdullah II has participated in the latest missions by the Jordanian air force to drop urgent medical supplies to field hospitals it runs in Gaza.
A video was posted by state-owned Al Mamlaka TV on X which showed the Jordan’s monarch taking part in the humanitarian aid airdrop in the besieged coastal enclave.
However, the broadcaster did not give a date for when the airdrop took place.
