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SvennoJ on 28 August 2025
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Gaza’s healthcare system on verge of collapse: Hospital director

The director of al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Mohammed Abu Salmiya, has spoken to Al Jazeera about the dire healthcare situation in the coastal enclave.

Here is a summary of his translated comments:

  • We are facing a severe shortage of operating rooms and all medical supplies.
  • We are unable to deal with the large number of wounded and sick.
  • We are facing a catastrophe if Israel seizes Gaza City.
  • We have between 1,500 and 2,000 wounded people for whom we cannot find a place in the hospitals of the Strip.
  • If the occupation forces invade Gaza City, we will be witnessing a major massacre.
  • Diseases are spreading in camps and homes amid the collapse of the health system.
  • We call on the world to protect medical personnel and open humanitarian corridors to provide relief to patients.


Modest food aid increase not enough to stop starvation in Gaza, says WFP chief

Cindy McCain, the head of the World Food Programme (WFP), has told the Reuters news agency that “a little bit more food” is getting into Gaza, “but it’s not nearly enough to do what we need to do to make sure that people are not malnourished and not starving”.

Speaking via videolink from Jerusalem, McCain said the WFP is now able to deliver about 100 aid trucks per day into Gaza, but this figure still falls far short of the 600 trucks that were entering daily during the ceasefire.

McCain, who visited Deir el-Balah and Khan Younis this week – including a clinic supporting children and pregnant and lactating women – highlighted ongoing difficulties in delivering aid to vulnerable populations deep inside Gaza.

“What we saw was utter devastation. It’s basically flattened, and we saw people who are very seriously hungry and malnourished,” McCain said. “It proved my point that we need to be able to get deep into it [Gaza] so we can make sure that they can consistently have what they need,” she said.


UN experts decry ‘enforced disappearances’ at Gaza aid sites

UN rights experts voiced alarm at reports of “enforced disappearances” of starving Palestinians seeking food at distribution sites run by the GHF, urging Israel to end the “heinous crime”.

The seven independent experts said in a joint statement they had received reports that a number of individuals, including one child, had been “forcibly disappeared” after visiting aid distribution sites in Rafah.

Israel’s military was reportedly “directly involved in the enforced disappearances of people seeking aid”, they added.