The World Health Organisation has warned that an Israeli military offensive against Rafah in southern Gaza would cause an “unfathomable catastrophe” and push the enclave’s health system closer to the brink of collapse, Reuters reports.

“Military activities in this area, this densely populated area, would be, of course, an unfathomable catastrophe… and would even further expand the humanitarian disaster beyond imagination,” said Richard Peeperkorn, WHO representative for Gaza and the West Bank.

“It will also increase the burden on a completely overburdened… health system on its knees and increase the trauma burden and it would push the health system closer to the brink of collapse,” Peeperkorn said.

He said that only 40 per cent of WHO’s missions to northern Gaza had been authorised from November, and that this figure had dropped significantly since January.

“All of these missions have been denied, impeded, or postponed,” he said, adding it was “absurd” that only 45 per cent of WHO’s mission requests for southern Gaza had been granted.