At least 500 medical personnel have been killed since the beginning of Israel's war on Gaza on Oct. 7 last year, the Gaza Health Ministry said Sunday as the world marked International Nurses Day.
“Here in Palestine and in Gaza in particular, this day passes as the Israeli occupation has killed 138 nurses. This year's International Nurses Day is exceptional, and it is our right to name this year the Year of Nursing,” ministry spokesperson Khalil al-Daqran said during a news conference on the sidelines of a sit-in organized by nurses at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the city of Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip.
“Nurses, midwives and medical teams are an integral part of the fabric of the Palestinian people. They were the martyrs who played their national and humanitarian role to save the lives of the wounded and the sick,” said al-Daqran.
“They fulfilled their professional oath in a year where records were broken in terms of the amount of treatment provided under circumstances where the medical personnel were martyred, injured, displaced in tents or detained in Israeli racist prisons, with the number of medical personnel reaching 500 martyrs, 1,500 wounded and 312 detainees,” he added.
Al-Daqran called on the “international community and free people of the world to protect medical personnel and health institutions and to criminalize attacks against them.”
He also urged unions, international organizations and the World Health Organization (WHO) to send medical and nursing teams to support health teams in Gaza.
More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed and over 76,600 others injured in a brutal Israeli onslaught on the Gaza Strip since an attack by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7 last year that killed nearly 1,200 people.
More than seven months into the Israeli war, vast swathes of Gaza lay in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water and medicine.
In an interim ruling in January, The Hague-based International Court of Justice (ICJ) said it is "plausible" that Tel Aviv is committing genocide in Gaza, ordering it to stop such acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in in the enclave.
South Africa on Friday asked the ICJ to order Israel to withdraw from the southern Gaza city of Rafah as part of additional emergency measures over the war.
*Writing by Rania Abu Shamala
