GENEVA: The World Health Organisation said on Saturday that Gaza’s largest hospital had been reduced to ashes by Israel’s latest siege, leaving an “empty shell” with many bodies.

Israeli forces pulled out of Al Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Monday after a two-week military operation, during which it said it had battled Palestinian militants inside what was once the Palestinian territory’s most important medical complex.

A WHO-led mission finally accessed the hospital on Friday, after multiple failed attempts since March 25, the UN health agency said, describing the massive destruction.

“WHO and partners managed to reach Al Shifa — once the backbone of the health system in Gaza, which is now an empty shell with human graves after the latest siege,” agency chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus wrote on X, formerly Twitter.

He said the team had seen “at least five dead bodies during the mission”. They had also found that “most of the buildings in the hospital complex are extensively destroyed and the majority of assets damaged or reduced to ashes”, the WHO chief said.

“Even restoring minimal functionality in the short term seems implausible,” he said, adding that “an in-depth assessment by a team of engineers is needed to determine if the remaining buildings are safe for future use”.

Tedros lamented that efforts by WHO and other aid groups to revive basic services at Al Shifa after Israel’s first devastating raid on the hospital last year “are now lost, and people are once again deprived of access to lifesaving health care services”.

Of Gaza’s 36 main hospitals, only 10 remain partially functional, according to WHO.Tedros said urgent action was needed in Gaza as “famine looms, disease outbreaks spread and trauma injuries increase”.

He called for the “protection of remaining health facilities in Gaza (and) protection of health and humanitarian workers”.

Published in Dawn, April 7th, 2024