The targeted destruction of Gaza’s healthcare system by the Israeli military amounts to “medicide”, a group of UN experts has said, accusing Israel of deliberately attacking and starving healthcare workers, paramedics and hospitals to wipe out medical care in the besieged enclave, Al Jazeera reports.

“As human beings and UN experts, we cannot remain silent about the war crimes committed before our eyes in Gaza,” said Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right to health and Francesca Albanese, special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory.

“In addition to bearing witness to an ongoing genocide, we are also bearing witness to a ‘medicide’, a sinister component of the intentional creation of conditions calculated to destroy Palestinians in Gaza which constitutes an act of genocide,” the experts said.

“Health and care workers have been continuously targeted, detained, tortured and are now, like the rest of the population, being starved,” they said.