WHO says Israel forced it to remove medical supplies from Gaza warehouse

The World Health Organization has said that Israel forced it to remove medical supplies from a warehouse in southern Gaza, as it pounds the besieged enclave with airstrikes.

“Today, @WHO received notification from the Israel Defense Forces that we should remove our supplies from our medical warehouse in southern Gaza within 24 hours, as ground operations will put it beyond use,” Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the WHO director-general said in a post on X.

Israel’s office for coordination in the Palestinian territories, called COGAT, denied the claim in a statement.

But Shannon Barkley a member of the WHO's staff in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip said workers had completed “a proportion of the evacuation of the warehouse to a new facility.”

The WHO issued a dire warning on social media platform X that thousands of Palestinians could be cut off from healthcare as result of Israel’s continued assault on Gaza. 

“We have seen what happened in northern Gaza. This cannot be the blueprint for the south. Gaza cannot afford to lose another hospital as health needs continue to soar,” according to the statement.

The number of operational hospitals in Gaza has dropped from 36 to 18 in less than 60 days, according to the WHO, with three providing only basic first aid and others offering partial services.

Twelve hospitals still remain operational in the south part of the Gaza Strip, according to the WHO.

It warned that access to storage facilities could become “challenging” in the coming days as Israel expands its ground offensive in southern Gaza.

“As more civilians in southern Gaza receive immediate evacuation orders and are forced to move, more people are being concentrated into smaller areas, while the remaining hospitals in those areas run without sufficient fuel, medicines, food, water, or protection of health workers.”