Ghebreyesus criticized the destruction caused by Israeli troops in the city of Khan Yunis, in the Gaza Strip, where several hospitals were damaged.

A WHO team that visited the city to assess the state of the hospitals described the destruction as “disproportionate to anything one can imagine,” Ghebreyesus questioned. “No building or road is intact, there is only rubble and earth,” he stressed, warning that the hostilities and the damage caused left the Nasser, Al-Amal and Al-Khair hospitals out of service.

Hospitals, said the head of WHO “do not have a supply of oxygen, water, electricity or a sewage system, the team found how the warehouse of the Nasser hospital, which supplies many health centers in the south, was on fire and seriously damaged.” He also noted that the fire destroyed most supplies, including a substantial amount of essential medicines provided by WHO and its partners.

Up until recently, Nasser Hospital was the backbone of the health system in southern Gaza, and Al-Amal Hospital was one of the few that offered services to mothers and children, but now it is rubble, Ghebreyesus lamented.

This week the WHO once again condemned the destruction of Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in the Gaza Strip, after a massive Israeli operation. “The scenes at the hospital are heartbreaking: severely damaged wards, burned beds, destroyed equipment, corpses in shallow graves outside,” the institution noted on X.

Last month, Israeli troops besieged and assaulted the hospital for almost two weeks, arguing that hundreds of militants from the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) and Islamic Jihad were hiding inside. Benjamin Netanyahu’s government claimed that about 200 of them were killed and hundreds captured, but health authorities and groups denied such claims and accused the armed forces of Israel of attacking doctors and patients.

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