The health and humanitarian situation in Gaza, with the extension of the fighting to the south of the strip and forced evacuations to increasingly overcrowded areas, is causing “civilization and society to collapse,” a spokesperson for the World Health Organization (WHO) warned today.

“Every day is more horrible than the last, with terrible scenarios in which children beg for water (…) or people cut down telephone poles to be able to heat themselves or cook,” described WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier at a conference. of press. The official source stressed that some of the convoys with medical aid coordinated by the WHO have been detained in their transit to the northern half of Gaza, and that today, Friday, an operation to evacuate patients from the Al Ahli Hospital, also in the northern part, was suspended.

“We cannot afford to lose even one more health center, not a single ambulance, at a time when we fear that southern Gaza will experience the same violence as the north,” he said. According to the WHO, only 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain operational, and only two of them are in the northern part.

Lindmeier recalled that this Thursday marked two months since Hamas attacks against Israeli civilians, some violent acts that he condemnedbut also noted that in this time a campaign has been deployed “against the entire Gazan population, innocent civilians, through attacks that even Israel’s main allies consider indiscriminate.”