Geneva, Nov 22 (EFE).- Some 500 patients and doctors from the Indonesian Hospital in the north of Gaza were evacuated on Tuesday in a new operation coordinated by humanitarian agencies, the United Nations said Wednesday in its daily report on the conflict.
The evacuation was carried out the day after an attack on the hospital killed at least 12 people, said the report from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, prepared hours before a four-day truce was announced between Israel and Hamas.
“The hospital remains surrounded by Israeli troops and tanks, and fighting with armed groups has been reported in its vicinities, with additional patients and thousands of internally displaced persons (IDPs) trapped in the facility and awaiting evacuation,” the United Nations noted, adding that only two small hospitals in the north of Gaza, out of a total of 24, remain operational.
In the south of the Strip, an area to which the evacuation of Gazan civilians has been ordered (although it is still being bombed by Israel), seven of the 11 hospitals are functional, the UN said, adding that the number of hospital beds in the Palestinian territory has fallen from 3,500 before the conflict to 1,400.
The attacks on hospitals continued in the past 24 hours, and in one against the al-Awda hospital, four doctors were killed, Doctors Without Borders said Tuesday.
The World Health Organization has documented 178 attacks on medical facilities in Gaza to date, with at least 22 deaths and 48 injuries among health workers on duty.
The UN said 1.7 million people have been displaced due to the conflict, more than three quarters of the population of Gaza. Some 930,000 are housed in UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) shelters across the Strip, with 770,000 in the south.
In the evacuations from the north to the south of the Strip ordered by Israel, it has been found that there is an increasing number of unaccompanied minors and separated families, the report said.
The document also noted that at least 53 journalists have died in the conflict, two of them this week. EFE
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