At least 350 healthcare workers killed in Gaza since start of war: UN Special Rapporteur

“We know that 520 healthcare professionals have been injured, and we know that 350 healthcare professionals, including allied healthcare workers, have been killed,” Mofokeng told a press briefing on Monday.

A number of teenagers used to assist medical workers in Gazan hospitals to help them deal with the growing number of those injured and killed, but the adolescents have not been enlisted among the casualties as they were not officially registered as medical workers, the UN special rapporteur added.

“The health system in Gaza has been completely obliterated and the right to health has been decimated at every level. The conditions are incompatible with the realization of everyone to the highest attainable state of physical and mental health. The attacks, the harassment, the killings of many of my own colleagues, healthcare workers, the destruction of health facilities and the destruction of humanitarian aid organizations continue to catapult to proportions yet to be fully quantified if at all possible,” Mofokeng said.

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 34,200 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 77,150 others injured amid mass destruction and severe shortages of necessities.

The Israeli war has pushed 85% 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.

Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.