UPDATE - 'Best way' to ensure safety of patients, civilians at Al-Shifa Hospital not evacuation but 'stopping hostilities': WHO

ADDS FURTHER REMARKS; REPLACES WORD "HARD" WITH "DIFFICULT"

By Beyza Binnur Donmez

GENEVA (AA) - The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday said that the "best way" to ensure the safety of patients as well as civilians taking shelter at Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital is not a risky evacuation but "stopping hostilities now."

Taking Anadolu's question at a UN press conference in Geneva, WHO spokesperson Margaret Harris said the hostilities should be stopped for the sake of "saving lives, not taking lives."

Harris stressed that everyone in the hospital is in a "really, really dire situation," adding that the hospital is not only hosting 700 patients but also 400 health staffers and around 3,000 internally displaced people.

She added that the hospital has reported 20 patient deaths in the last 48 hours.

"All their lives are so threatened. So we as a world have to find a way to help them," she said. "The best way would be to stop the hostilities right now. Focus on saving lives, not taking lives."

Asked about water-borne illnesses, as Israel has cut off Gaza’s water supplies for over a month and the water that is available is either brackish or unclean, Harris said: “So again, this is another reason why we are begging for a cease-fire to happen now.”

-'Evacuation would be difficult even in normal times'

On the Israeli army’s order to evacuate the hospital, Gaza’s largest, she said that it would not possible to evacuate 700 at-risk patients, underlining it would be "very difficult," even if they have to move if and when the hospital stops working due to lack of fuel, as most in Gaza have.

"Well, certainly in normal times, that would be difficult,” Harris explained. “Such a large number of people, all of whom require critical support to stay alive. That would be a very difficult thing to ask in the best circumstances in Australia, America, or UK, or Europe, with your best things functioning and nobody shooting at you, no bombs going off, and all the roads that are actually working and with ambulances that have got fuel.”

She said the WHO still defines Al-Shifa Hospital as a functioning hospital due to "heroic efforts."

Without fuel, clean water, or food, the health staff is still doing everything they can to keep providing medical care for the desperately ill patients they have, she stressed.

On WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus saying Shifa Hospital is "not functioning as a hospital anymore," Harris referred the hospital as a tertiary referral hospital, in which patients that normal hospitals cannot deal with get treatment.

"So it's not functioning in the way it normally would function," she added.

As the Israeli assault on the Gaza Strip nears its 40th day, at least 11,180 Palestinians have been killed, including over 7,700 women and children, and more than 28,200 others have been injured, according to the latest figures from Palestinian authorities.

Thousands of buildings including hospitals, mosques and churches have also been damaged or destroyed in Israel's relentless air and ground attacks on the besieged enclave since last month.

The Israeli death toll, meanwhile, is nearly 1,200, according to official figures.