Israel's Rafah incursion taking dire health toll: WHO

Geneva: Israel s military offensive in Rafah is already taking a dire health toll in southern Gaza, and if it continues, substantial increases in de...

Geneva: Israel's military offensive in Rafah is already taking a dire health toll in southern Gaza, and if it continues, "substantial" increases in deaths can be expected, a top WHO official warned on Tuesday.

Since Israel launched its long-threatened Rafah incursion in early May, access to healthcare in Gaza's southernmost city has been devastated, said Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization's representative in the Palestinian territories.

Speaking to AFP and Reuters in a joint interview in Geneva, he pointed to the around one million people on the move since the incursion, which has left two of Rafah's three hospitals completely disfunctional.

Al-Najar, Rafah's most important hospital, which had been servicing 700 dialysis patients from all over the Palestinian territory, has shut down, as has the Kuwaiti hospital.

And the Emirati maternity and paediatric hospital was now "barely functional", Peeperkorn said, pointing out that it could no longer accept new patients.