Gaza: Israeli airstrikes kill doctors and damage healthcare facilities

Israeli airstrikes in the Palestinian territory of Gaza have damaged six hospitals, nine primary health care centres, and a desalination plant that supplies clean water to 250 000 people, the United Nations has reported.1

Gaza’s main covid-19 laboratory and the Palestinian Ministry of Health offices have also been hit,2 and at least two prominent doctors, the internal medicine consultant Ayman Abu Alouf, who was leading the covid-19 team at Al Shifa hospital, and the health ministry neurologist Moeen Al-Aloul, have been killed.

The latest escalation in violence was the result of unrest in the West Bank, as pro-settler organisations have been attempting to force Palestinian families from their homes in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, in a move that the United Nations warned could amount to “war crimes.”3

Since the unrest began on 7 May at least 212 Palestinians, including 61 children, have been killed in …