Nearly 1,000 Palestinian health workers killed by Israeli forces in Gaza named
Israeli forces have killed 1,151 Palestinians working in Gaza’s health sector during its onslaught on the enclave, the Palestinian health ministry said on Tuesday.
A total of 986 were named in a new report published by the ministry, while personal data for the remaining 165 was still being verified.
The delay in the verification process was due to Israeli authorities withholding the victims' bodies or their remains being buried under rubble.
At least 165 of those killed were doctors, 260 nurses, 300 management and support personnel, 184 health associate professionals, 76 pharmacists and 12 other health workers.
“The Palestinian sector has been subjected to a systematic attack by the occupation forces that has affected all its components,” the ministry said.
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Health facilities were the target of direct and repeated Israeli raids and air strikes, it added, which has crippled the health system and left hundreds of thousands of war victims facing “imminent death”.
Health workers have been arrested, brutally interrogated and assassinated, it said.
“The data included in this report… reflects the effects of the systematic and deliberate Israeli aggression against the health sector.”
The Israeli military has been accused of deliberately destroying Gaza’s health system through constant attacks on hospitals, ambulances and doctors, including by air strikes, detentions and denial of medical equipment, since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on Israel.
In June, it was revealed that Dr Iyad Rantisi, who was the director of Kamal Adwan hospital’s maternity department, died “under torture” in Israeli custody after he was detained by invading troops from Gaza in November.
He was the second Palestinian physician from the Gaza Strip to die from torture in Israeli detention since the beginning of the war, after prominent surgeon and professor of orthopaedic medicine Dr Adnan al-Bursh was killed in Israeli detention in April.
More than 300 health workers were detained by Israeli forces during the assault.
Former prisoners say doctors are singled out for cruel treatment by Israeli forces in detention, where torture and abuse of Palestinian prisoners is widespread and systematic.
Record death tolls
The Tuesday report comes a day after the health ministry published the names of 34,344 people who were killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces up to 31 August.
The Palestinian health ministry has recorded more than 41,200 Palestinian deaths in total as a result of Israeli attacks since the war began, but the process to collect data for nearly 7,000 more people has not yet been completed.
The Monday list included the names of 11,355 children out of 16,700 estimated by officials to have been killed.
Among them were 710 babies aged zero on the list, meaning they were under the age of one when they were killed.
The majority of them were born and killed during the war.
Since the early days of the war, international bodies and human rights groups repeatedly raised alarm over the high death toll among Palestinian civilians, especially children, doctors, journalists, aid workers and others.
The death toll among each of those categories is one of the highest in modern conflicts.
At least 220 UN aid workers were killed in Israeli air strikes, the highest staff death toll in UN history.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) also said the death toll among media workers in Gaza is the highest since they began recording data in 1992, with over 170 journalists killed according to the Gaza-based government media office.
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