Nearly 1,000 Palestinian health workers killed by Israeli forces in Gaza named
A woman holds doctors scrubs, as rescuers search for dead bodies inside Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital after Israeli forces destroyed it, 8 April 2024
Huthifa Fayyad reports in Middle East Eye on 17 September 2024:
Israeli forces have killed 1,151 Palestinians working in Gaza’s health sector during its onslaught on the enclave, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday.
A total of 986 were named in a new report published by the ministry, while personal data for the remaining 165 was still being verified. The delay in the verification process was due to Israeli authorities withholding the victims’ bodies or their remains being buried under rubble.
At least 165 of those killed were doctors, 260 nurses, 300 management and support personnel, 184 health associate professionals, 76 pharmacists and 12 other health workers.
“The Palestinian sector has been subjected to a systematic attack by the occupation forces that has affected all its components,” the ministry said.
Health facilities were the target of direct and repeated Israeli raids and air strikes, it added, which has crippled the health system and left hundreds of thousands of war victims facing “imminent death”.
Health workers have been arrested, brutally interrogated and assassinated, it said. “The data included in this report… reflects the effects of the systematic and deliberate Israeli aggression against the health sector.” The Israeli military has been accused of deliberately destroying Gaza’s health system through constant attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors, including by air strikes, detentions and denial of medical equipment, since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.
In June, it was revealed that Dr Iyad Rantisi, who was the director of Kamal Adwan hospital’s maternity department, died “under torture” in Israeli custody after he was detained by invading troops from Gaza in November. He was the second Palestinian physician from the Gaza Strip to die from torture in Israeli detention since the beginning of the war, after prominent surgeon and professor of orthopaedic medicine Dr Adnan al-Bursh was killed in Israeli detention in April.