Geneva:

The World Health Organization said Thursday that at least a quarter of those hurt in the war raging in Gaza have suffered “life-changing injuries”, many requiring amputations and other “huge” rehabilitation needs.

At least 22,500 of the people injured in Gaza in the 11 months since the war erupted will “requires rehabilitation services now and for years to come”, the WHO said in a statement.

“The huge surge in rehabilitation needs occurs in parallel with the ongoing decimation of the health system,” Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO’s representative for the Palestinian territories, said in a statement.

According to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza, at least 41,118 people have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive following the October 7 attack by Hamas militants, while over 95,000 have been wounded.

The Hamas attack inside Israel that sparked the war resulted in the deaths of 1,205 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures, which also includes hostages killed in captivity.

Pointing to a fresh analysis of the types of injuries resulting from the conflict, the UN health agency said “many thousands of women and children” figured among those badly injured and that many had suffered more than one injury.

It estimated there had overall been between 13,455 and 17,550 “severe limb injuries”, which it said were the main driver of the need for rehabilitation.

The report showed that between 3,105 and 4,050 limb amputations had occurred.

Other life-altering injuries including spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury and major burn injuries, it said.

At the same time, WHO said only 17 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are currently even partially functional, while primary health care services are frequently suspended or inaccessible due to insecurity, attacks and repeated evacuation orders.

Gaza’s only limb reconstruction and rehabilitation centre, located in Nasser Medical Complex and supported by WHO ceased functioning last December due to lack of supplies and specialised health workers.

“Tragically, much of the rehabilitation workforce in Gaza is now displaced,” the statement said.

Peeperkorn said that “patients can’t get the care they need”.

“Acute rehabilitation services are severely disrupted and specialised care for complex injuries is not available, placing patients’ lives at risk,” he said.

“Immediate and long-term support is urgently needed to address the enormous rehabilitation needs.”

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Palestinians inspect the damage at a tent area in the courtyard of Al Aqsa Martyrs hospital, hit by an Israeli bombardment on Deir al-Balah, central Gaza Strip, Thursday, Sept. 5, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Hamas’s lead negotiator on Thursday (September 5, 2024) urged the United States to press Israel for a truce in Gaza, accusing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of blocking a ceasefire in the Palestinian territory.

“If the U.S. administration and its President [Joe] Biden really want to reach a ceasefire and complete a prisoner exchange deal, they must abandon their blind bias towards the Zionist occupation and exert real pressure on Netanyahu and his government,” Qatar-based Khalil al-Hayya said in a video statement.

Months of back-and-forth talks mediated by Washington, Doha and Cairo have thus far failed to bring an end to the conflict in Gaza and secure a hostage and prisoner exchange.

Hamas and Israel have traded blame for the stalled talks, as pressure for a deal intensified after Israeli authorities announced on Sunday the deaths of six hostages whose bodies were recovered from a Gaza tunnel.

Mr. Netanyahu said the militant group had “rejected everything” in the indirect talks, saying on Wednesday Israel was “trying to find some area to begin the negotiations”.

“They [Hamas] refuse to do that… [They said] there’s nothing to talk about,” he added.

Mr. Netanyahu’s insistence on keeping control of the so-called Philadelphi Corridor along the Gaza-Egypt has emerged as a recent sticking point.

Mr. Hayya on Thursday accused the Israeli premier of seeking to “evade the obligation to reach a ceasefire agreement”.

Israeli soldiers drive a tank near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, Wednesday, June 5, 2024. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

The Israeli military on June 16 announced a “tactical pause” in its offensive in the southern Gaza Strip to allow the deliveries of increased quantities of humanitarian aid.

The army said the pause would begin in the Rafah area at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT, 1 a.m. eastern) and remain in effect until 7 p.m. (1600 GMT, noon eastern). It said the pauses would take place every day until further notice.

The pause is aimed at allowing aid trucks to reach the nearby Israel-controlled Kerem Shalom crossing, the main entry point for incoming aid, and travel safely to the Salah a-Din highway, a main north-south road, to deliver supplies to other parts of Gaza, the military said. It said the pause was being coordinated with the U.N. and international aid agencies.

The crossing has suffered from a bottleneck since Israeli ground troops moved into Rafah in early May.

Israel’s eight-month military offensive against the Hamas militant group has plunged Gaza into a humanitarian crisis, with the U.N. reporting widespread hunger and hundreds of thousands of people on the brink of famine. The international community has urged Israel to do more to ease the crunch.

From May 6 until June 6, the U.N. received an average of 68 trucks of aid a day, according to figures from the U.N. humanitarian office, known as OCHA. That was down from 168 a day in April and far below the 500 trucks a day that aid groups say are needed.

The flow of aid in southern Gaza declined just as the humanitarian need grew. More than 1 million Palestinians, many of whom had already been displaced, fled Rafah after the invasion, crowding into other parts of southern and central Gaza. Most now languish in ramshackle tent camps, using trenches as latrines, with open sewage in the streets.

COGAT, the Israeli military body that oversees aid distribution in Gaza, says there are no restrictions on the entry of trucks. It says more than 8,600 trucks of all kinds, both aid and commercial, entered Gaza from all crossings from May 2 to June 13, an average of 201 a day. But much of that aid has piled up at the crossings and not reached its final destination.

A spokesman for COGAT, Shimon Freedman, said it was the U.N.’s fault that its cargos stacked up on the Gaza side of Kerem Shalom. He said the agencies have “fundamental logistical problems that they have not fixed,” especially a lack of trucks.

The U.N. denies such allegations. It says the fighting between Israel and Hamas often makes it too dangerous for U.N. trucks inside Gaza to travel to Kerem Shalom, which is right next to Israel’s border.

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It also says the pace of deliveries has been slowed because the Israeli military must authorize drivers to travel to the site, a system Israel says was designed for the drivers’ safety. Due to a lack of security, aid trucks in some cases have also been looted by crowds as they moved along Gaza’s roads.

The new arrangement aims to reduce the need for coordinating deliveries by providing an 11-hour uninterrupted window each day for trucks to move in and out of the crossing.

It was not immediately clear whether the army would provide security to protect the aid trucks as they move along the highway.