Over 1,000 Israeli attacks on healthcare recorded in Gaza, West Bank

Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) have announced the figure amounts to the most reported attacks on healthcare in “any other conflict over a 10-month period on record”.

“More than 1000 attacks on doctors, patients, clinics, and health infrastructure have fuelled a public health catastrophe in the OPT [Occupied Palestinian Territory]. This grim milestone has few if any precedents for the scale and magnitude of attacks on health in the OPT,” said Houssam al-Nahhas, PHR’s Middle East and North Africa researcher.

“These are not only attacks on brick-and-mortar buildings, but acts that take away hospital beds, essential medications, surgeries, and life-saving care from women, men, boys, and girls,” he added.

The New York-based group called for independent investigations into the attacks on healthcare and warned Israel that the moves could constitute a violation of international humanitarian law.

At least 350 healthcare workers have been killed and 520 others injured in the Gaza Strip since October 7, 2023, when the Israel-Hamas conflict escalated, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to health Tlaleng Mofokeng stated in late April.

Israel has waged a brutal offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

Nearly 39,600 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 91,200 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 90% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water and medicine, while 60% of the enclave’s infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.