Geneva, December 21 (RHC)-- The United Nations has condemned as “sadistic” Israel’s attacks on the health sector of the besieged Gaza Strip, as the death toll in the war-torn Palestinian enclave exceeds 20,000, the majority of that number women and children.
In a post on X, Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, warned that the Tel Aviv regime’s attacks on the health system of the densely-populated Palestinian sliver had taken “the most sadistic forms.”
“Israeli occupation forces' assault on Gaza's health system is taking the most sadistic forms. Hospitals & medical personnel are sacred, especially at a time of great destruction, suffering & despair as this senseless war against the people in Gaza,” she said.
Albanese’s warning comes amid the regime's continuous missile attacks on hospitals and health workers across the Gaza Strip despite global outcry.
Since the start of the U.S.-backed aggression, the Israeli regime has killed more than 20,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 52,586 others. Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under the rubble.
Earlier this week, Doctors Without Borders said six of its staff were among hospital workers and patients who were stripped, bound, and interrogated by invading Israeli troops after they took over al-Awda Hospital. The hospital remains under military siege, leaving the entire northern part of the Gaza Strip without any type of medical service.
Late last week, the World Health Organization sounded the alarm about Israel's destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip amid reports that the regime's forces buried Palestinians alive at the facility's courtyard during the operation.
Meanwhile, the UN agency, citing the UN Human Rights Office, also reported that Israeli forces had killed at least 11 Palestinian men -- shooting them execution-style in front of their families. Another unspecific number of women and children were wounded in a residential building in Gaza City in “what may amount to a war crime.”
