UN decries targeted attacks on Gaza healthcare system News
Ashraf Amra, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
UN decries targeted attacks on Gaza healthcare system

UN experts on Wednesday condemned Israeli attacks deliberately targeting Gaza’s healthcare system as gross violations of international law and “medicide.”

In a UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner press release, UN experts defined “medicide” as the deliberate targeting of healthcare infrastructure and workers as a “component of the intentional creation of conditions” for genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

The experts asserted that the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) is “deliberately” attacking and starving healthcare workers and cited 735 reported attacks on health care facilities and hospitals in Gaza since 7 October 2023. With famine and a total aid blockade in Gaza, starving physicians are unable to properly care for patients.

Physicians for Human Rights interviewed health care workers deployed in Gaza, who reported restrictions on medical supplies and direct attacks on aid convoys. The extreme restrictions involve vague definitions of “dual-use” items, or items with potential military use. Physicians report that vital supplies—including sanitation materials, anesthesia, pain killers and dressings—were prohibited under these restrictions.

The UN experts urged the international community to act:

The disregard towards the crimes Israel continues to commit in Gaza sends a stark message to the world that the people of Gaza do not count and their life does not matter. Palestinians in Gaza are being denied their right to dignity, to existence, and to food. There is a moral imperative for the international community to end the carnage…

The UN called for a ceasefire, for the international community to hold Israel accountable, for the prevention of genocide, and for action to save Gaza’s collapsing healthcare system.

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