WHO eyes big medical evacuation from Gaza on Wednesday
UN agency will evacuate 113 patients, with most going to UAE and some heading to Romania
GENEVA: The World Health Organization said Tuesday a large-scale medical evacuation was planned from Gaza this week, with more than 100 seriously ill and injured patients due to leave the war-ravaged territory.
The WHO said that alongside its partners it would evacuate as many as 113 patients on Wednesday, with most going to the United Arab Emirates and some heading to Romania for specialised care.
If it goes ahead, it would be the largest evacuation from Gaza since October 2023, according to data from the UN health agency.
Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative in the Palestinian territories, said he was hopeful the evacuation would go ahead.
He said efforts were currently under way to bring patients from various hospitals across the Gaza Strip to the Gaza European Hospital near Khan Younis in the south.
They will be transported to the Kerem Shalom crossing early Wednesday and then flown on to the UAE and Romania, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva, via video link from Gaza.
14,000 in waiting
Those on the list figure among up to 14,000 people currently waiting in Gaza to be evacuated out of the territory for medical reasons.
Around half of them have sustained trauma injuries in the war and the others are suffering from serious illnesses such as cancer, he said.
Since the war in Gaza began following Hamas’s deadly October 7, 2023 attack inside Israel, fewer than 5,000 people have been granted medical evacuations out of the territory.
Only 282 have meanwhile been able to leave since Israel shuttered Gaza’s main Rafah border crossing in early May, Peeperkorn said, adding that around a third of them had been children.
Peeperkorn lamented the “ad hoc” access to desperately-needed medical evacuations from Gaza.
“What we need is regular access... which would be properly supported, facilitated and not made unnecessarily dangerous,” he said.
“We need medical corridors, and the first medical corridor we basically request to be restored is the traditional referral pathway from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and... a second medical corridor to Egypt should be open again, and maybe to Jordan.”
13 dead in Israel strikes
Gaza civil defence agency said on Tuesday that at least 13 people, including some living in tents for displaced Palestinians, were killed in Israeli air strikes overnight.
Four people were killed when an Israeli missile hit the home of the Shurafa family in eastern Gaza City, civil defence spokesman Mahmud Bassal told AFP.
Three people were killed and several wounded when a tent housing Palestinians displaced by the war was hit by an Israeli missile in the east of Khan Yunis city, Bassal said.
Another tent housing displaced people in Deir Al Balah in central Gaza was also hit by an Israeli air strike overnight, killing at least four people, he added.
Two other people were killed in separate incidents, Bassal said.
The Israeli military, meanwhile, said its forces were continuing their land and air assault in northern Gaza, where the civil defence says hundreds have been killed since October 6, when the military launched the offensive.
Meanwhile, Lebanese state media reported a strike on an apartment in the Jiyeh coastal area south of Beirut on Tuesday, more than a month into the Israel-Hezbollah war.
The official National News Agency said “a raid targeted a residential apartment in a building in the town of Jiyeh,” where an AFP correspondent said a large plume of grey smoke covered the area.
Israel attacks town near Lebanon border
An Israeli strike hit a Syrian town near the border with Lebanon on Tuesday, Syrian state media said, less than a week after deadly strikes on the same area.
“An Israeli aggression targeted the industrial zone in al-Qusayr” in Homs province, the official SANA news agency said. There was no immediate news of casualties or damage.