Israel destroyed the main medical center of a charity in Gaza City after ordering its evacuation, in yet another grave violation of international law.
The Palestinian Medical Relief Society said an Israeli strike reduced its six-story building in the central Samer area to rubble. It said the center was one of the main facilities in the city providing blood donation and testing services, trauma care, cancer medicine and chronic disease treatment.
There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military, which has repeatedly bombed and raided hospitals in Gaza throughout the war.
Multiple hospitals in famine-stricken Gaza City have been forced to shut down as Israeli forces advance. Israel audaciously accuses Hamas of using medical facilities for military purposes, but fails to provide evidence of such a presence.
The head of the World Health Organization, which has partnered with the charity, condemned the strike. "Attacks on health facilities must end. The senseless violence must stop. Ceasefire!” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X.
The medical charity said another of its centers was damaged and surrounded by Israeli troops, and that a third center was destroyed in a separate strike. Gaza's Health Ministry said Monday that the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital and the Specialized Eye Hospital had been forced to shut down because of nearby Israeli military operations.
Several Western countries on Monday called on Israel to restore a medical corridor for Palestinians in Gaza to be treated in east Jerusalem and the West Bank, and for Israel to lift restrictions on medical supplies entering Gaza.
The statement was cosigned by 24 nations, including Canada, France and Germany, and comes as Israel has faced mounting criticism over the war in Gaza from even some of its closest allies.
Israel unlawfully occupied East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza in the 1967 Mideast war. The Palestinians want all three territories for a future state.
Israel launched a major offensive earlier this month aimed at occupying Gaza City, the territory’s largest, which has already suffered heavy damage from previous raids and bombardment.
The world’s leading authority on hunger crises said last month that Israel’s blockade and ongoing attacks had already pushed Gaza City into famine. More than 300,000 people have fled the city in recent weeks as Israel has ordered the population to move south, but an estimated 700,000 remain, according to U.N. agencies and aid groups.
At least 65,382 Palestinians have been killed in the war, mostly women and children.
