Healthcare staff ‘systematically targeted’, doctor says in shocking interview
government must be held to account. Enough is enough.
“The UK Government continues to send arms to Israel despite the fact they have killed children, women, aid workers and bombed hospitals, schools and refugee camps. Shameful and unacceptable.
“Arms sales to Israel must stop immediately.”
It came as a Cypriot official said ships that arrived in Gaza this week will return to the Mediterranean island nation carrying some 240 tons of undelivered aid after an air strike killed seven aid workers.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Theodoros Gotsis said that around 100 tons of aid had been unloaded before WCK suspended operations.
Cyprus has played a key role in trying to establish a maritime aid corridor to Gaza from its port city of Lacarna. Cypriot president Nikos Christodoulides said that more aid could be shipped to Gaza from Cyprus before the end of the month.
The president said that the tragic event “should not discourage us” and that the international community should “double down” on efforts to provide more assistance to Gaza.
HEALTHCARE workers in the Gaza Strip are having to wear civilian clothing when they leave hospitals as wearing scrubs is a “target sticker on their back”, an intensive care doctor has said.
Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor for Doctors Without Borders, told Sky News of the “direct and systematic” targeting of healthcare staff by the Israeli military as she detailed how innocent workers had been executed “point blank” at the al-Shifa hospital.
It comes after the hospital was left in ruins following a two-week raid by Israel. Hamas has claimed the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) killed 400 people in the compound.
According to the IDF, the facility was used to harbour Hamas fighters and cited the killing of 200 militants including senior operatives. However, the UN health agency said several hospital patients had died and dozens were put at risk during the raid.
In the interview, Haj-Hassan was asked if Hamas was there and fighting with the Israelis to which she then detailed the horrendous reality healthcare workers are currently facing.
She said: “I am just shocked we are still having this conversation.
“They executed tens of people point blank including one of our colleagues who is a very experienced plastic surgeon, him and his mother who is also a physician.
“To say this is a strategic targeting of Hamas is an insult to our intellect and our humanity.
“This is a destruction of people who heal. This is a direct targeting of healthcare workers. I just want to
They executed people point blank including a colleague who was an experienced plastic surgeon
paint a very brief picture of what healthcare workers are telling me there.
“They’re saying that when they leave the hospital, civilians give them civilian clothing because wearing scrubs is sticking a target sticker on their back.
“That is how systematically healthcare has been targeted.
“I worry [what] is coming to the remaining hospitals in the Gaza Strip because of what has been the pattern and we will not ignore it, is a direct and systematic targeting of healthcare that is unjustifiable.”
Haj-Hassan also talked of colleagues who had been detained for more than
100 days – adding that she did not know whether they are alive or dead. Palestinians who fled al-Shifa have described days of heavy fighting, mass arrests and forced marches past dead people, while the Hamas-run health ministry described the scale of the destruction inside the complex as “very large”.
“Dozens of bodies, some of them decomposed, have been recovered from in and around the Al-Shifa medical complex,” the health ministry said, adding the hospital was now “completely out of service”.
Most of Gaza’s hospitals are no longer functioning, the UN has said.