Gaza: Guterres ‘shocked and saddened’ by deadly strikes on Al Mawasi, as WHO and partners aid medical response

This article is published in association with United Nations.

The UN health agency and partners are helping treat many of those injured during Saturday’s deadly airstrikes by Israeli forces on Gaza’s Al Mawasi area which have reportedly left at least 90 dead and around 300 injured, according to figures from the war-torn enclave’s health ministry.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said via his Spokesperson late on Saturday that he was “shocked and saddened by the loss of lives”.

Israeli officials said the attack had been a “precision” strike targeting top Hamas military commander Mohammed Deif and his deputy Rafa Salama.

The strike took place close to the city of Khan Younis in an area reportedly designated by the Israeli military as a safe zone for civilians.

‘Nowhere is safe in Gaza’

UN Spokesperson Stéphane Dujarric said that reports indicated the attack had taken place in a densely populated area “designated as a humanitarian zone sheltering displaced people.”

“This underscores that nowhere is safe in Gaza”, he stressed. “The Secretary-General condemns the killing of civilians, including women and children.”

The Secretary-General underlined once again that there must be an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, with all hostages released “immediately and unconditionally.”

In a post on X, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that 134 “severely injured people” had been admitted to the nearby Nasser Medical Complex “which is extremely overwhelmed by the influx”.

Multiple hospitals treating the injured

WHO staffers are at the hospital along with two emergency medical teams helping to treat the injured, he continued.

“We have dispatched 50 foldable beds and 50 stretchers to increase the hospital’s capacity while our prepositioned medicines and trauma supplies are being used to save lives.”

Some of the injured have also been taken to a field hospital run by the International Medical Corps in Deir Al Balah where WHO supplies have been provided to meet the urgent needs of around 120 others. Other NGO field hospitals have also received patients in need of urgent treatment, he said.

Senior Communications Officer for the UN refugee agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) Louise Wateridge, tweeted harrowing video from Al Nasser hospital on Saturday afternoon local time where workers were “mopping up pools of blood with water alone.”

She described children lying on blood stained matresses “traumatised from losing siblings. Some had lost limbs. Many had life changing injuries.”

The UN human rights office (OHCHR) in the Occupied Palestinian Territory issued a statement condemning the continued use of weapons which have a wide-area impact in populated areas of Gaza.

It is clear that using bombs in such close proximity to thousands of those displaced by the fighting has led to disproportionate harm to civilians and damage to civilian infrastructure suggesting “a pattern of willful violation” of international humanitarian law, especially when the military had told civilians that area was a designated safe zone, OHCHR said. 

‘Senseless massacre’

The independent UN expert who monitors human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, said in a post on X that she was “horrified” at the deaths and injuries sustained during the strikes on what an Israeli military official said was an operational Hamas compound, in an “open area”.

Hamas said it was “false” that Israel had targeted it’s two top military commanders.

Of the Israeli attack which she said was “yet another senseless massacre” of civilians, Special Rapporteur Albanese tweeted “The justification is always the same: ‘targeting Palestinian militants’.”

Officials from Gaza’s civil defence authority also reported that at least 20 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli attack on a prayer centre inside the Shati camp for the displaced, to the west of Gaza City on Saturday.

Listen here to UNRWA’s Louise Wateridge describe to UN News what saw earlier this week in Gaza City, following a week-long Israeli offensive there.