WHO chief calls for end to IDF raids and strikes on Gaza hospitals

The head of the World Health Organization calls for an end to Israeli military raids and strikes on hospitals in Gaza after the IDF struck one and raided another in the past few days.

The IDF said both medical facilities were being used by Hamas.

“Hospitals in Gaza have once again become battlegrounds and the health system is under severe threat,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus says in a post on X.

“We repeat: stop attacks on hospitals. People in Gaza need access to health care. Humanitarians need access to provide health aid. Ceasefire!” he adds, without calling for the release of the 100 hostages abducted from Israel and held in the Strip.

The Israeli military said Hamas operatives were the targets of a strike on Gaza City’s Al Wafa hospital yesterday.

Israeli forces also detained more than 240 Palestinians including dozens of medical staff from Kamal Adwan hospital on Friday, among them its director Hussam Abu Safiya.

The Israeli military said the hospital was being used as a command center for Hamas military operations and those arrested were suspected operatives. It said Abu Safiya was taken for questioning as he was suspected of being a Hamas operative.

Tedros, who last week was caught up in an IDF strike against Yemen’s main airport amid rising attacks on Israel by the Iran-backed Houthis, calls for Abu Safiya’s immediate release and says the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza City had also faced attacks.

Tedros says the WHO and partners had delivered basic medical supplies, food and water to Gaza’s Indonesian hospital and transferred 10 critical patients to Al Shifa hospital. Four patients were detained during the transfer, he says.

“We urge Israel to ensure their health care needs and rights are upheld,” Tedros says.