Gaza: 1,000 deaths in 100 days due to occupation preventing treatment abroad

The government media office in Gaza said on Wednesday that more than a thousand children and patients died in 100 days due to the Israeli occupation forces preventing them from receiving treatment abroad, in addition to preventing 25 thousand patients from traveling.

The director of the office, Ismail Al-Thawabta, explained to Al Jazeera that the occupation is destroying the health system and has prevented the entry of all medical supplies for 100 days, as part of its prevention of the entry of aid trucks into the Strip, noting that the occupation forces’ restrictions on the entry of aid deepens the famine in the Strip.

Al-Thawabat demanded to open Rafah crossing To allow the entry of aid and to allow the transfer of patients for treatment abroad, and he appealed to the international community to pressure the occupation to stop the ongoing war of extermination in the Strip, which has also caused the deaths of children due to malnutrition.

In early March, the World Health Organization said that 8,000 patients needed to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip, and expressed its disappointment at the small number of patients who had been evacuated from the besieged Strip for more than 5 months.

The organization explained that evacuating this large number of patients from Gaza would relieve some of the pressure on doctors and hospitals that are struggling to continue working in the difficult war conditions.

The organization's representative in the occupied Palestinian territories, Richard Peeperkorn, said – during a video interview with journalists – that among these patients are about 6,000 who were injured in the war waged by Israel on the Strip, and that among them are patients suffering from multiple injuries and burns, and some of them have had their limbs amputated.

The UN official added that about 50 to 100 patients were being transferred for treatment outside Gaza daily before the war, as they were receiving treatment in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and that about half of them were cancer patients.

Targeting education

Earlier, the government media office in Gaza said that the occupation destroyed more than 112 schools and universities in the Strip and executed more than 100 university professors and scientists, stressing that the occupation forces killed more than 500 teachers in the Strip and “deliberately exterminated everyone who sought refuge in schools, and this was repeated 155 times.”

Today, Wednesday, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, announced that 625,000 children in Gaza, including 300,000 UNRWA students, lost an entire school year as a result of the war on Gaza.

Lazzarini explained in a statement published on the “X” platform that 4 out of 5 school buildings in the sector were directly bombed or damaged and need to be repaired or rebuilt for use again.

This comes within the framework of the ongoing war of the occupation army on Gaza since October 7, leaving tens of thousands of martyrs, wounded and missing, amid a humanitarian situation described as catastrophic and a worsening famine looming over the besieged Strip.