The UN refugee agency for Palestinians UNRWA has issued a stark warning, describing hospitals in Gaza as death traps.

In a message posted on its X media platform, the UNRWA highlighted the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, saying that families are torn apart, children are freezing to death, and others are dying from starvation.

According to the Palestinian Health Ministry, only 14 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza are partially operational and are facing critical shortage of medical supplies.

Kamal Adwan and Indonesian Hospitals have been rendered non-functional due to continued Israeli siege and raids.

Officials have repeatedly warned that healthcare in Gaza has been pushed to the brink of collapse under relentless attacks by Israeli forces on hospitals and health facilities, including its barbaric destruction of the Kamal Adwan Hospital in the battered north of Gaza on December 28, 2024.

The regime’s forces raided the hospital, forcibly removed patients and staff, and kidnapped the director of the hospital Hussam Abu Safia along with many medical staff before setting the building on fire.

Latest media reports indicate that the al-Aqsa Hospital in central Deir el-Balah serves about one million Palestinians. It is now out of basic supplies and medicine. Surgeries are being done without anaesthesia.

Human rights groups like the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor are raising alarm bells, fearing the doctor is at risk of torture, given that other detained medical workers have faced brutal treatment during the Israeli aggression. 

Elsewhere in the post, the UN agency on Wednesday also called for an immediate ceasefire to alleviate the crisis. A senior UNRWA official attributed the death of newborns to the lack of blankets and warm clothes. He called on the Israeli regime to lift the siege on Gaza and allow humanitarian aid there.

Several children have died from hypothermia so far this winter after being displaced by Israel’s campaign of death and destruction in Gaza, health officials have said.

Thousands of displaced Palestinians have moved to al-Mawasi in search of refuge, living for months in makeshift tents made of cloth and nylon. Al-Mawasi, a coastal region west of Rafah, previously designated by Israel as a “humanitarian area,” has repeatedly come under Israeli attacks.

Lazzarini, recently said that Gaza babies “are freezing to death due to cold weather and a lack of shelter.”

Israel has massacred about 46,000 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023.

The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics says Gaza has lost about 6 percent of its population due to Israel’s campaign of genocide.