WHO: Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital a 'Death Zone', Urges Full Evacuation

Al-Shifa hospital - File Photo/Reuters
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WHO: Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital a 'Death Zone', Urges Full Evacuation

Al-Shifa hospital - File Photo/Reuters

The World Health Organization said Sunday it had led an assessment mission to Al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City and determined it was a "death zone", urging a full evacuation.

"WHO and partners are urgently developing plans for the immediate evacuation of the remaining patients, staff and their families," the United Nations health agency said in a statement, adding that 291 patients and 25 health workers remained inside the hospital.

WHO said it had headed a joint UN team, including public health experts, logistics officers and security staff from a range of agencies on a short and "very high-risk" mission into the hospital on Saturday.

The assessment team had gone into Al-Shifa after the Israeli military had earlier ordered the evacuation of some 2,500 displaced people sheltering on the hospital grounds, WHO said.

"They, along with a number of mobile patients and hospital staff, had already vacated the facility by the time of the team's arrival," the statement said, AFP.

Columns of sick and injured -- some of them amputees -- were seen making their way out of Al-Shifa hospital Saturday towards the seafront without ambulances along with displaced people, doctors and nurses, as loud explosions were heard around the complex.

The UN assessment team was meanwhile only able to spend an hour inside the hospital due to the security situation.

The team, WHO said, described the hospital as a "death zone" and the situation as "desperate".

"Signs of shelling and gunfire were evident. The team saw a mass grave at the entrance of the hospital and were told more than 80 people were buried there," the statement said.

A lack of clean water, fuel, medicines, food and other essential aid over six weeks had caused the largest and most advanced hospital in Gaza to basically stop functioning as a medical facility, WHO said.

"Corridors and the hospital grounds were filled with medical and solid waste, increasing the risk of infection."

Among the patients remaining in the hospital were 32 babies "in extremely critical condition", WHO said.

There were also two people in intensive care without ventilation, 22 dialysis patients whose access to life-saving treatment was severely compromised, and many trauma victims.

Several patients had died in the past two to three days "due to the shutting down of medical services", WHO said.

The UN health agency said that given the state of the hospital, the team was asked to evacuate health workers and patients to other facilities.

"We are working with partners to develop an urgent evacuation plan and ask for full facilitation of this plan," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X, former Twitter.

"We continue to call for protection of health and of civilians," he said, lamenting that "the current situation is unbearable and unjustifiable. Ceasefire. NOW."

WHO said additional missions would go in "over the next 24–72 hours, pending guarantees of safe passage" to help transport patients to the Nasser Medical Complex and European Gaza Hospital in southern Gaza.

It stressed though that those hospitals were already working beyond capacity and the new referrals would "further strain overburdened health staff and resources".

Israel has vowed to destroy Hamas after its militants carried out unprecedented attacks inside Israel on October 7.

The army's relentless air and ground campaign has since killed 12,300 people, most of them civilians, including more than 5,000 children, according to the Hamas government which has ruled Gaza since 2007.



Hamas Says It’s Sending a Delegation to Qatar to Continue Gaza Ceasefire Talks 

A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
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Hamas Says It’s Sending a Delegation to Qatar to Continue Gaza Ceasefire Talks 

A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)
A child looks on as mourners pray next to the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 15, 2025. (Reuters)

A Hamas official said Monday that the Palestinian group is sending a delegation to Qatar to continue indirect ceasefire talks with Israel over the war in Gaza, as the territory’s Health Ministry said that 38 people were confirmed dead over the past day.

The Hamas official said teams have been discussing terms for a new ceasefire agreement over recent days in Cairo, including a proposal that Hamas free eight to 10 hostages held in Gaza. But the Hamas official said a major sticking point remained over whether the war would end as part of any new deal.

The talks in Qatar are meant to take place later this week or next, the official said.

The Hamas official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the sensitive talks with the media. Officials from Israel and Qatar had no immediate comment.

Israel and Hamas agreed to a ceasefire in January that lasted eight weeks before Israel resumed the war last month. The initial ceasefire agreement was meant to bring the sides toward negotiating an end to the war, something Israel has resisted doing because it wants to defeat Hamas first.

Since the ceasefire fell apart last month, Israel has blocked aid from entering Gaza and forces have also seized swaths of the coastal enclave in a bid to ratchet up pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal more aligned with Israel's terms.

On Monday, the United Nations humanitarian office warned that the humanitarian situation in Gaza is now likely to be “the worst” since Israel launched its retaliation to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack, pointing to the Israeli ban on all supplies entering the Gaza Strip since March 2.

UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters: “No fuel has come in, no food has come in, no medicine has come in.”

The war started when Hamas-led fighters killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, during the attack on southern Israel and took 251 people captive. Most have since been freed in ceasefire agreements and other deals. Fifty-nine remain in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.

Nearly 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory offensive, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between combatants and civilians in its count but says more than half of the dead have been women and children.

The Health Ministry said Monday that the bodies of 38 people killed in Israeli strikes were brought to hospitals across the territory over the past 24 hours. It said more than 1,600 people have been killed since the ceasefire collapsed.

Also Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross confirmed that a Palestinian medic was detained during an Israeli military operation in which troops killed 15 first responders in the Gaza Strip. It was the first confirmation of the medic's whereabouts since the March 23 attack in southern Gaza.

A statement from the Red Cross said it has not been granted access to visit him and did not say how it had received confirmation of his detention. The Israeli military had no immediate comment.

The Israeli military initially said troops had opened fire on vehicles that raised suspicion because they were traveling without lights on. It later backtracked after a cellphone video emerged showing clearly marked ambulances traveling with their sirens flashing before the shooting.

The military also said it killed nine militants traveling in the ambulances, without providing evidence. It named one of the militants, but the name did not match those of any of the paramedics, and no other bodies are known to have been recovered.

The military says it is investigating further.