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tedros adhanom ghebreyesus
14 Children From Same Family Among at Least 38 Killed by Israeli Strike on Gaza
"There is apparently no limit to the crimes against humanity that Biden administration officials will support or excuse," said one observer.
Oct 25, 2024
Dozens of Palestinians including many children from the same family were killed in an overnight Israel Defense Forces airstrike on their homes in the southern Gaza Strip following an IDF attack on a hospital in northern Gaza, where a number of children died after their oxygen was cut off.
Reutersreported Friday that Israel Defense Forces (IDF) strikes across Gaza have killed at least 72 Palestinians since Thursday night. At least 38 members of the al-Farra family, including women and 14 children, were killed when Israel bombed their residences in Khan Younis. Multiple local and international media outlets reported the children—whose bodies were intact after the strike—suffocated to death.
Some Palestine advocates slammed the Biden administration—which has approved tens of billions of dollars worth of military aid for Israel and provides diplomatic cover for its war—for unconditionally supporting the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"If the slaughter of babies in hospitals and children in their sleep does not shock the conscience of the Biden administration officials supporting the far-right Israeli government's genocide in Gaza, nothing will," Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement Friday.
Warning: The following video contains images of dead children.
"What crime would Israel have to commit that would end the Biden administration's complicity in genocide?" Awad added. "There is apparently no limit to the crimes against humanity that Biden administration officials will support or excuse."
Israel's 385-day assault on Gaza—which is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case—has left tens of thousands of children dead, maimed, missing, or orphaned and hundreds of thousands more forcibly displaced, starved, or sickened. Experts also say the war has wrought the "complete psychological destruction" of Gaza's children.
According to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), Gaza is "the world's most dangerous place to be a child." For the first time, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres this year added Israel to his "list of shame" of countries that kill and harm children during wars and other conflicts.
Overall, nearly 43,000 Palestinians—mostly women and children—have been killed by Israeli bombs and bullets, with more than 100,000 others wounded and at least 10,000 more believed dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed-out homes and other buildings.
Israeli forces also attacked the Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahia, northern Gaza, on Thursday after besieging the facility for days. Eyewitnesses said IDF tanks and bulldozers repeatedly entered the hospital compound and fired on the facility, damaging the intensive care unit with sick children inside and the storage tanks that provide its water and oxygen supplies. Hospital staff and wounded patients were reportedly kidnapped by IDF troops.
According toAl Jazeera, a number of children including babies died in the hospital due to a lack of oxygen.
"All departments of the hospital are under direct shelling," director Dr. Hussam Abu Safia
toldCNN. "Instead of receiving aid, we are receiving tanks."
Kamal Adwan is one of only three minimally functional hospitals in northern Gaza, where Israeli forces have been carrying out an offensive that has left thousands of Palestinians dead or wounded in recent weeks.
On Friday, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that WHO officials have "lost touch with the personnel there."
"This development is deeply disturbing given the number of patients being served and people sheltering there," Tedros added.
The IDF said in a statement Friday that its assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital is "based on intelligence information regarding the presence of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure" and claimed it has "facilitated the evacuation of patients from the area while maintaining emergency services."
However, Abu Safia said Thursday that "we lose at least one person every hour because of the lack of medical supplies and medical staff."
"Our ambulances can't transfer wounded people," he added. "Those who can arrive by themselves to the hospital receive care, but those who don't just die in the streets."
UNICEF spokesperson James Elder said Friday that "children are being medically evacuated from Gaza at a rate of fewer than one child per day."
"If this lethally slow pace continues, it would take more than seven years to evacuate the 2,500 children needing urgent medical care," he continued. "As a result, children in Gaza are dying—not just from the bombs, bullets, and shells that strike them—but because, even when 'miracles happen,' even when the bombs go off and the homes collapse and the casualties mount, but the children survive, they are then prevented from leaving Gaza to receive the urgent care that would save their lives."
"This is not a logistical problem—we have the ability to safely transport these children out of Gaza," Elder added. "It is not a capacity problem—indeed, we were evacuating children at higher numbers just months ago. It is simply a problem that is being completely disregarded."
Fikr Shalltoot, Gaza director at the U.K.-based charity Medical Aid for Palestinians, said in a statement Friday that "this assault on Kamal Adwan Hospital is yet another atrocity by Israel that is eradicating Palestinian life in Gaza."
"Patients in need of lifesaving care are now left helpless under siege," Shalltoot added. "Healthcare workers, who should be able to provide care with dignity, are now fearing for their lives."
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory recently released a report concluding that "Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities."
Israel's intensified assault on Gaza comes as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken vowed during a meeting with Arab leaders in London to work with "real urgency" toward a cease-fire.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi, who attended the meeting, admonished Blinken: "We look at northern Gaza and we do see ethnic cleansing taking place, and that has got to stop."
Many observers including IDF participants in the war believe that Israel has implemented the so-called "General's Plan," a blueprint for the starvation and forced expulsion of Palestinians from northern Gaza. Hundreds of Israelis including senior government officials recently attended a conference geared toward ethnically cleansing and recolonizing Gaza.
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Israel Killed 28 Lebanese Medical Workers in 24 Hours, 73 Since War's Start: WHO
"I'm afraid first about my safety and about my family's safety because there's no safe place in Lebanon now," said one physician.
Oct 04, 2024
The head of the United Nations World Health Organization said Thursday that Israeli forces killed 28 healthcare workers in Lebanon over the previous 24 hours, and that 73 medical personnel are among the nearly 2,000 Lebanese killed during Israel's bombing and invasion of its northern neighbor.
"In southern Lebanon, 37 health facilities have been closed, while in Beirut, three hospitals have been forced to fully evacuate staff and patients, and another two were partially evacuated," WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference in Geneva. "And yet healthcare continues to come under attack. In Lebanon alone, 28 health workers have been killed in the last 24 hours."
Tedros said the WHO "calls on urgent facilitation of flights to deliver health supplies to Lebanon," adding, "Lives depend on it!"
Lebanese Health Minister Firas Al-Abiad said separately Thursday that more than 40 paramedics and firefighters have been killed by Israeli forces over the previous three days.
Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar, the acting WHO representative in Lebanon, said that "most of those healthcare workers killed in the last 24 hours, most of them—actually, all of them—were on duty."
"Some of them were in the ambulances, some of them were in the health facilities," Abubakar added. "They were on duty trying to help civilians who have been wounded in the conflict."
Dr. Fathalla Fattouh, the head cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH) in Jnah, just outside Beirut, described the chaos he witnessed firsthand, including "a surge of nearly identical injuries—amputations, eye trauma, and shattered hip and femur bones—straining the hospital's capacity to a near-breaking point."
"We were forced to make difficult decisions," he added. "I believe that we did our best relying on available capacities, but with the escalation of events we need to plan for the worst."
Sara, a surgeon at the hospital, said that "there are only two hospitals in Lebanon prepared to treat burn patients, and once they were at capacity, we were left with nowhere to send the patients we received."
"It was a feeling of helplessness that we had never experienced before," she added.
Some doctors admitted fearing for their lives.
"It's hard to work in fear," Dr. Mohammad Taoube, who heads the emergency room at an undisclosed hospital in southern Lebanon, toldSky News on Wednesday. "I'm afraid first about my safety and about my family's safety because there's no safe place in Lebanon now."
According to figures provided by the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Israeli forces have killed 1,974 people in Lebanon—including at least 127 children—while wounding 9,384 others in recent weeks.
At least one American has been killed by Israeli bombing of Lebanon this week. Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, 56, of Dearborn, Michigan was killed Tuesday while in Nabatieth in southern Lebanon caring for his sick mother and volunteering to help elderly, disabled, and injured patients at a local hospital.
The Nabatieth area has come under heavy Israeli bombardment. Local journalists said the city's main hospital "came under direct Israeli fire" on Friday and that two nurses were killed.
Lebanese officials said Friday that more than 1.2 million people have been forcibly displaced amid Israel's recent bombing and invasion of their country. The Israeli campaign comes amid attacks by the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah, whose rockets and other projectiles have killed or wounded scores of Israelis and forced tens of thousands from their homes.
Residents of southern Lebanon described the terror of coming under Israeli bombardment and having to flee for their lives. One woman, Fatima, and her 14-year-old daughter Zeinab said they were in their home preparing for a school exam when the shelling started.
"My mother told us to pack our things quickly, and we left in a rush," Zeinab told the U.N. Children's Fund on Thursday. "My siblings were crying. The journey was terrifying."
"The shelling was all around us, and the sound of explosions echoed everywhere," she said while crying. "We miss home dearly and yearn to return."
Tedros noted that since last October, when Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, over 1 million Lebanese have been displaced, with many seeking refuge in neighboring Syria.
He also said that "since the 7th of October last year, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel, almost 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 700 in the West Bank."
"In addition," Tedros added, "more than 10,000 people are missing in Gaza, and 1.9 million people are displaced, while 101 hostages taken from Israel remain in Gaza."
Hundreds of Palestinians working in the health sector have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, who have deliberately targeted medical workers. Israeli troops have also allegedly tortured doctors and other medical workers after kidnapping them from the coastal enclave.
Tedros on Thursday stressed the need for "deescalation of the conflict; for healthcare to be protected and not attacked; for access routes to be secured and supplies delivered; and for a cease-fire, a political solution, and peace."
"The best medicine," he said, "is peace."
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'We Need a Cease-Fire Now': Israeli Bombings Kill Dozens During Polio Vaccination Drive
"Israel kills 33 Palestinians in 24 hours but wants Palestinian families to think it's safe to travel to vaccinate their kids against polio," said one clinician.
Sep 04, 2024
United Nations agencies reiterated their calls for a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday after healthcare workers completed the first phase of a polio vaccination push in the face of relentless, deadly Israeli airstrikes.
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the World Health Organization, announced early Wednesday that more than 187,000 children under the age of 10 were vaccinated during the first three days of the vaccination drive, an effort launched shortly after health officials detected the first polio case in the enclave in over two decades.
"Four fixed sites will continue to offer polio vaccination for the next three days in central Gaza to ensure no child is missed," said Tedros. "Preparations are underway today to roll out the vaccine campaign in south Gaza, which will start tomorrow. We are grateful for the dedication of all the families, health workers, and vaccinators who made this part of the campaign a success despite the dire conditions in the Gaza Strip."
"We ask for the humanitarian pauses to continue to be respected," he added. "We continue to call for a cease-fire."
The U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) echoed that message, writing on social media that "above all, we need a cease-fire now."
U.S.-armed Israeli forces have bombed the Gaza Strip throughout the dayslong vaccination drive, with one human rights monitor noting that some of the attacks "targeted locations near the vaccination centers."
Al Jazeerareported Wednesday that the Israeli military "targeted a home" in Gaza's Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least one person. In Khan Younis, an Israeli airstrike "killed two more people, including a child," the outlet reported.
Gaza health officials said Tuesday that more than 30 people had been killed over the preceding 24-hour period.
" Israel kills 33 Palestinians in 24 hours but wants Palestinian families to think it's safe to travel to vaccinate their kids against polio," clinician and activist Annie Sparrow wrote on social media.
Health officials and aid workers risking their lives to vaccinate Gaza children against polio have said an enclave-wide inoculation campaign could only be successful with a sustained cease-fire deal, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is obstructing an agreement with hardline demands, including a continued Israeli military presence in the Palestinian territory.
The Washington Postnoted Tuesday that Netanyahu's insistence on Israeli control of the Philadelphi Corridor—a strip of land along Gaza's border with Egypt—"has also raised tensions with Egypt, which objects to any Israeli presence there and has warned that it violates the 1979 Israeli-Egypt peace treaty, a landmark agreement that has preserved peace between the two countries for more than four decades."
In the absence of a deal to end Israel's assault, humanitarian conditions on the ground in Gaza continue to deteriorate.
Tor Wennesland, the U.N.'s special coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said after returning from Gaza earlier this week that he "witnessed firsthand the catastrophic impact of the hostilities."
"The scale of destruction is immense, the humanitarian needs are colossal and soaring, and civilians continue to bear the brunt of this conflict. I unequivocally condemn the horrifying civilian death toll in Gaza," said Wennesland. "A deal is crucial to saving lives, reducing regional tensions, and enabling the U.N., in cooperation with the Palestinian Authority, to accelerate efforts to address the pressing needs of Gaza's population."
"The ongoing conflict has destroyed the lives of countless families," he added. "It must stop."
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