WHO: More than 100 patients in Gaza to be evacuated

The World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday that a large-scale medical evacuation from Gaza is planned this week, with more than 100 seriously ill and injured patients leaving the war-torn area.

The WHO said it, along with its partners, would evacuate as many as 113 patients on Wednesday, most going to the United Arab Emirates and some to Romania for specialized care.

If it goes ahead, it would be the largest evacuation from Gaza since October 2023, according to U.N. health agency data.

Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative in the Palestinian territories, said he was hopeful the evacuation would go ahead.

He said efforts were currently underway to transfer patients from several hospitals in the Gaza Strip to the Gaza European Hospital near Khan Yunis in the south.

They will be transported to the Kerem Shalom border crossing early on Wednesday and then flown via video link from Gaza to the UAE and Romania, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva.

Those on the list are among the approximately 14,000 people currently in Gaza waiting to be evacuated from the area for medical reasons.

About half of them suffered trauma during the war and the others suffered from serious diseases such as cancer, he said.

Since the war in Gaza began following Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel, fewer than 5,000 people have received medical evacuations from the area.

Only 282 people have been able to leave since Israel closed Gaza’s main Rafah crossing in early May, Peeperkorn said, adding that about a third of them were children.

Peeperkorn deplored the “ad hoc” access to much-needed medical evacuations from Gaza.

“What we need is regular access… that is properly supported, facilitated and not made unnecessarily dangerous,” he said.

“We need medical corridors, and the first medical corridor that we want to restore in principle is the traditional referral route from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and… a second medical corridor to Egypt should be open again, and maybe also to Jordan.”

Hamas’ attack on October 7 resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli official figures.

Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,391 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Gaza Health Ministry figures that the United Nations considers reliable. (AFP)