WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said Monday, December 4, that the Israeli army had told the UN health agency to empty an aid warehouse in southern Gaza before ground operations in the area made it unusable.
"Today, WHO received notification from the Israel Defense Forces that we should remove our supplies from our medical warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put it beyond use," Tedros wrote on X, formerly Twitter. "We appeal to Israel to withdraw the order, and take every possible measure to protect civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals and humanitarian facilities," he wrote.
Israel's army on Monday sent dozens of tanks into southern Gaza as part of expanded action against Hamas, as communications were cut across the besieged territory.
The number of operational hospitals in Gaza has dropped from 36 to 18 in less than 60 days, according to the WHO, with three providing only basic first aid and others offering partial services. Twelve hospitals still remain operational in the south part of the Gaza Strip, according to the WHO.
At a press conference earlier on Monday, the WHO regional director for the eastern Mediterranean, Ahmed al-Mandhari, said the intensification of military ground operations in southern Gaza risked depriving thousands of people of health care. "We saw what happened in the north of Gaza. This cannot serve as a model for the south," he said.
'Nowhere left to go'
A UN official warned on Monday that "an even more hellish scenario" looms in Gaza in which humanitarian aid simply grinds to a halt. "The conditions required to deliver aid to the people of Gaza do not exist," said Lynn Hastings, UN humanitarian coordinator for the Palestinian territories.
Since the end of a seven-day truce, Israeli forces have pushed into southern Gaza, "forcing tens of thousands... into increasingly compressed spaces, desperate to find food, water, shelter and safety," Hastings said. "Nowhere is safe in Gaza and there is nowhere left to go." "If possible, an even more hellish scenario is about to unfold, one in which humanitarian operations may not be able to respond," Hastings said in a statement.
Hastings, a Canadian, rejected the idea of "safe zones" urged upon Israel by the US government where people are still unable to move about freely. "These zones cannot be safe nor humanitarian when unilaterally declared," she said. "What we see today," Hastings added, "are shelters with no capacity, a health system on its knees, a lack of clean drinking water, no proper sanitation and poor nutrition for people already mentally and physically exhausted: a textbook formula for epidemics and a public health disaster."
Further complicating aid deliveries, two major roads in Gaza have been declared off-limits to UN teams and trucks, Hastings said. Hastings has her base in Jerusalem but Israel last week informed the UN that it would not renew her visa, accusing her of not being "impartial."
The spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres meantime called again for "a sustained humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza and the unconditional and immediate release of all remaining hostages."