Doctors Without Borders has suspended operations in Gaza City because of the danger to its staff caused by the Israeli military’s ground offensive, the latest sign of the growing pressures on medical care in the territory.
The organization, which provides medical care, including treatment for malnutrition and severe trauma injuries, said on Friday that it had stopped activities in Gaza City and that Israeli tanks and military strikes had advanced within roughly a half mile of the group’s clinics there.
“We have been left with no choice but to stop our activities, as our clinics are encircled by Israeli forces,” Jacob Granger, the emergency medical coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders, said in a statement. “This is the last thing we wanted, as the needs in Gaza City are enormous.”
The charity made the announcement on the same day that the United Nations said four hospitals had been rendered unusable in the north of the territory over the past month, adding that an airstrike severely damaged one of them on the first day of the Israeli ground offensive. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tarik Jasarevic, a spokesman for the World Health Organization, told reporters in Geneva on Friday that more hospitals in Gaza might have to suspend operations in the coming days because of a lack of supplies, including blood and blood bags.
A lack of fuel to run hospital generators has also been a persistent problem during the war, which was ignited by a Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Gaza’s health ministry said last week that unreliable supplies could make access to health care even harder.
Gaza’s medical system has been further devastated since Israel launched its full-scale ground offensive on Gaza City, which it says is one of the last Hamas strongholds in the territory, on Sept. 16.
Israel issued an evacuation order for the city before the offensive began, and last week the military said roughly 640,000 of the nearly one million people there had fled to the south of the territory.
But Mr. Granger said that many of the most vulnerable people, including “infants in neonatal care, those with severe injuries and life-threatening illnesses,” were unable to leave.
Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the director general of the World Health Organization, called the deteriorating conditions in Gaza City “disturbing and alarming.”
“Attacks on and around health facilities are making it impossible to deliver lifesaving care,” he said on social media on Friday. He called on Israel to “ensure safe access and protection for health workers, patients, and medical aid.”
One of the health facilities that closed in the past month was the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital, which the United Nations said was hit by a military strike on Sept. 16 while 80 patients were inside. The agency said the strike at Al-Rantisi did not kill anyone but damaged rooftop water tanks, communication systems and medical equipment. The Israeli military did not immediately respond to request on Saturday for comment about the strike.
Israel has said that Hamas uses hospitals for military purposes, a claim that Hamas denies. Under the international rules of conflict, hospitals are considered protected sites that should not be attacked except in rare circumstances.
The closures have left just 14 hospitals operating in all of Gaza, the United Nations said, where 2.2 million people have endured almost two years of unrelenting war that has killed more than 65,000 people, according to local health officials, and flattened large swaths of the territory.
Eight of the 14 remaining hospitals in Gaza are in Gaza City, and six are in the central or southern part of the enclave, in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis.
The World Health Organization said the hospitals in Gaza City had been overwhelmed with patients injured in military strikes and that people fleeing Gaza City had flooded those in Deir al Balah and Khan Younis.
Mohammad Abu Salmiya, the director of Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, said on Saturday that his facility was still operating. There were about 200 wounded and sick patients there, and more were arriving every day as Israel continued its offensive, he said.
Dr. Abu Salmiya said the military operation had made it difficult to replenish supplies at the hospital, which was Gaza’s leading medical center before the war. He said both the staff and the patients were concerned that the Israeli military would order them to evacuate, as it has at least twice during the war.
Doctors Without Borders said that last week its staff in Gaza City had seen 3,640 patients and treated 1,655 people for malnutrition, an urgent need in an area that a U.N.-backed panel of food experts said last month was suffering from famine. Israel has denied the panel’s findings and criticized its methodology.
Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
Liam Stack is a Times reporter who covers the culture and politics of the New York City region.
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