The UN denounces the ongoing siege of Al Shifa Hospital, which has caused the deaths of patients and health workers

Over the past 24 hours, there have been continuous bombardments and armed clashes around Al Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s main hospital, where the United Nations says three nurses have been killed. the installation.

According to the daily report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, the latest attacks caused damage to the cardiovascular care unit and the maternity ward, among other hospital facilities in Gaza City, the capital of the Gaza Strip.

“Some IDPs, staff and patients have managed to flee, but others remain trapped,” the document points out, recalling that the lives of 36 babies in incubators and patients with kidney problems undergoing dialysis are at risk.

The World Health Organization (WHO), for its part, warns that it has lost contact with Al Shifa, while another hospital in the Gaza capital, Al Quds, is no longer operational due to a lack of fuel, according to media reports. .

The United Nations also notes that on Saturday an airstrike destroyed the Swedish clinic in western Gaza City, where half a thousand internally displaced people took refuge, and that another attack on Saturday night killed two doctors and others were injured. Mahdi Hospital, also in the capital of the strip.

The Israeli military claims that armed groups are active in Al Shifa and in underground tunnels beneath the facilities, something denied by the Gaza Ministry of Health, which is demanding an independent investigation into these types of attacks on health areas.

The UN report recalls that hospitals and medical personnel are specifically protected by international humanitarian law so that they cannot be targeted by military attacks, and that operations in these hospitals or in their surroundings must pay special attention to the protection of patients, healthcare workers and others.