Healthcare system collapses in northern Gaza amid Israeli assault: Hospital director

By Hosni Nedim and Ramzi Mahmud
GAZA CITY, Palestine (AA) – The healthcare system has completely collapsed in the northern Gaza Strip amid a deadly Israeli offensive in the area, a hospital director said on Tuesday.
“Any injured person who reaches the hospital dies due to lack of resources,” Hussam Abu Safiya, Director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, told Anadolu.
He appealed for allowing ambulances into the blockaded area to help evacuate the victims of the Israeli attacks in northern Gaza.
“No single ambulance is currently operating in northern Gaza,” he added.
"There is no means to transport the injured. Those injured reach us either by themselves or are transported by civilians. They sometimes die during their trip to the hospital due to bleeding,” he said.
Abu Safiya called for pressuring Israel “to urgently allow medical teams, especially surgeons, into northern Gaza with medical supplies before it is too late.”
“Israel is waging a cleansing and extermination war in northern Gaza against residents and the healthcare system,” he asserted.
More than 90 Palestinians were killed early Tuesday in an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the northern city of Beit Lahia, according to local authorities.
Marwan Al-Hams, the director of field hospitals in Gaza, said the limited number of medics in northern Gaza makes it impossible to deal with the high number of casualties from the attack.
He appealed to the international community to dispatch medical teams to provide medical help to the injured people in northern Gaza.
The Israeli army has continued a deadly onslaught in northern Gaza since Oct. 5 to allegedly prevent Hamas from regrouping amid a suffocating siege on the area. Palestinians, however, accuse Israel of seeking to occupy the area and forcibly displace its residents.
More than 1,000 people have been killed in northern Gaza since the offensive began, according to the Palestinian Civil Defense Service.
The onslaught was the latest episode in a brutal Israeli war on the Gaza Strip since a Hamas attack last year, despite a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire.
Over 43,000 people have since been killed, mostly women and children, and over 101,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.
The Israeli onslaught has displaced almost the entire population of the territory amid an ongoing blockade that has led to severe shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its actions in Gaza.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala