The World Health Organization said Wednesday its staff will remain in Gaza City despite Israeli military orders for residents to evacuate ahead of an assault.
"To civilians in Gaza: WHO and partners remain in Gaza City," the U.N.'s health agency said on its X account.
Israel's army is intensifying its attacks on Gaza City – the main urban center in the besieged Gaza Strip – with the goal of fully occupying the city. This week, it warned civilians there to leave.
The U.N. estimates that around 1 million Palestinians live in and around Gaza City.
"WHO is appalled by the latest evacuation order," the head of the agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on X.
He said the Israeli demand that the city's 1 million people go to what Israel was calling a "humanitarian zone" in the south of the Gaza Strip was unfeasible.
"The zone has neither the size nor scale of services to support those already there, let alone new arrivals," he said.
Tedros pointed out that half of the functioning hospitals left in the Gaza Strip were in Gaza City, and the territory's "crippled health system cannot afford to lose any of these remaining facilities."
He urged the international community to "act," saying that, in Gaza, "this catastrophe is human-made, and the responsibility rests with us all."
Israel has waged a genocidal war on Gaza since October 2023, after a Hamas incursion into southern Israel caused around 1,200 deaths.
Israel's war, in comparison, has killed nearly 65,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Gaza Health Ministry.
The U.N. has declared famine in parts of Gaza, which Israel contests.
