TEHRAN - Health facilities in the Gaza Strip have been among the main targets of the Israeli military since the regime launched its brutal onslaught on the besieged Palestinian territory on October 7.

Israel has been targeting hospitals from the air and storming them since it launched a ground invasion into the enclave on October 27, killing civilians sheltering there and terrifying the medical staff.

These despicable attacks on medical centers have added to the agonies of the patients.
 
The Nasser Hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis is the latest health center that has been raided by the Israeli forces. 

The Health Ministry in Gaza said on Sunday that the hospital has been put “completely out of service”.

“There are only four medical teams – 25 staff – currently caring for patients” inside the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis,” Ashraf al-Qidra said. 

“Nasser medical complex is the backbone of healthcare in southern Gaza Strip. Its ceasing to function is a death sentence for hundreds of thousands of Palestinian displaced people in Khan Younis and Rafah,” the official added. 

The World Health Organization also said the Nasser Hospital is no longer functioning.

Israeli troops stormed the Nasser Hospital on Thursday. The regime’s military claimed that it was hunting for Hamas fighters. But, the resistance movement has denied allegations that its fighters use medical facilities for cover.

According to health officials in Gaza, Israelis detained a large number of medical staff inside the medical complex. 

They said Israel’s incursion into the hospital led to the deaths of several patients after electricity was severed and oxygen supplies cut. 

The now-defunct Nasser Hospital was Gaza’s second-largest hospital and the largest active medical facility in the territory. 

The other main hospital in Khan Younis, Al-Amal, had also been stormed by the Israeli army. 

The regime has previously claimed that several hospitals in the Gaza Strip have been used as command centers of the Hamas resistance movement. 

Under a similar pretext, the regime stormed Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital last year and committed a massacre there. So far, Israeli evidence has fallen short of its claims that the hospital was used as a Hamas base.  

Nonetheless, Israel has pressed ahead with deadly raids on Gaza’s health centers. Prominent rights groups have said attacks on hospitals in Gaza should be investigated as war crimes. 

According to International Humanitarian Law, hospitals can never be a military target. Under the First Geneva Convention, targeting hospitals is specifically outlawed.

Israel’s storming of hospitals, where displaced people seek shelter, undoubtedly amounts to medical terrorism.

In late January, the International Court of Justice ruled that Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide in Gaza. 

But, in defiance of international law, Israel’s war of genocide rages on in the Gaza Strip in the face of inaction by Western countries that provide the regime with huge amounts of weapons. 

Presently, Israeli plans to storm the southern city of Rafah have caused international concern that such action would sharply worsen the humanitarian crisis in the besieged Palestinian territory. 

More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million population is sheltering in Rafah. Most people in the city, on the border with Egypt, are living in tents made of plastic sheeting, next to pools of sewage.  

The winter cold has added to already dire conditions as winds blew away some tents of the displaced and rain flooded others.

Soon after Israel launched its war on Gaza, it began ordering Palestinians in the northern half of the territory to leave their homes. However, Israeli warplanes continued to strike the southern half, where residents had been told to take refuge. 

Rafah is now under Israeli deadly air attacks.  Aid groups and humanitarian organizations have warned that another genocide could unfold in the Gaza Strip if Israel carries out a ground military operation in Rafah.