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GENEVA: The UN’s health agency said Wednesday its workers will remain in Gaza City despite calls from Israel’s military for people to flee an assault it is mounting there.
“To civilians in Gaza: WHO and partners remain in Gaza City,” the World Health Organization said on its X account.
Israel’s army is intensifying its attacks on Gaza City — the main urban center in the besieged Gaza Strip — with the goal of seizing the city. This week, it warned civilians there to leave.
The UN estimates that around one million Palestinians live in and around Gaza City.
“WHO is appalled by the latest evacuation order,” the head of the UN agency, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on X.
He said the Israeli demand that the city’s one million people go to what Israel was calling a “humanitarian zone” in the south of the Gaza Strip was unfeasible.
“The zone has neither the size nor scale of services to support those already there, let alone new arrivals,” he said.
Tedros pointed out that half of the functioning hospitals left in the Gaza Strip were in Gaza City, and the territory’s “crippled health system cannot afford to lose any of these remaining facilities.”
He urged the international community to “act,” saying that, in Gaza, “this catastrophe is human-made, and the responsibility rests with us all.”
Israel has been waging offensive operations in Gaza since October 2023, following a deadly attack launched from there by Hamas that resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 64,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza that the United Nations considers reliable.
The UN has declared famine in parts of Gaza, which Israel contests.

TUNIS: Tunisia said on Wednesday the “assault” on a ship at Sidi Bou Said port was “orchestrated,” after the Global Sumud Flotilla, preparing to deliver aid to Gaza, reported one of its boats was attacked by a drone in the second such strike in two days.
GSF is set to sail for Gaza in an effort to break Israel’s naval blockade, following two nights of drone attacks on key vessels in the convoy which organizers described as deliberate attempts by Israel to disrupt the mission.
The Israeli military did not respond to a request for comment.
There were no injuries, and civil protection authorities brought a fire on the boat under control on Wednesday night.
The Tunisian interior Ministry, which did not accuse any party or country, said in a statement that it was conducting investigations into the drone attack.
The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, told Reuters on Tuesday “it is an attack against Tunisian sovereignty.”
Earlier on Wednesday, thousands of Tunisians gathered on the picturesque beach of Sidi Bou Said to support pro-Palestinian activists on the boats, one of the biggest flotillas yet to set sail for Gaza.
The flotilla, which includes hundreds of activists and dozens of boats, is supported by delegations from 44 countries, including Swedish activist Greta Thunberg and Portuguese left-wing politician Mariana Mortagua.
Israel has maintained a blockade on the coastal enclave since Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007, saying it is needed to prevent weapons smuggling.
The blockade has remained in place through the current war, which began when Hamas attacked southern Israel in October 2023, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, Israeli tallies showed.
Israel’s subsequent military assault against Hamas has killed over 64,000 Palestinians, Gaza’s health ministry has said, while a global hunger monitor said part of the enclave is suffering from famine.
Israel sealed off Gaza by land in early March, letting in no supplies for three months, leading to the widespread shortage of food. Israel has said Hamas was diverting the aid.