The gridlock of patients in some of England’s hospitals has led to queues of up to 20 ambulances outside A&Es. Photograph: Andy Hall/The Observer
Paramedics across England are watching patients die in the back of ambulances because of delays outside emergency departments, according to a survey by Unison.
The gridlock of patients in some of the country’s hospitals has led to queues of up to 20 ambulances outside casualty departments in certain areas. In a number of cases, crews have been forced to wait more than 12 hours before handing over patients.
The survey of nearly 600 ambulance workers reveals the toll of the waits on patients and the crews looking after them. Unison warns that “car park care” is increasingly becoming the norm, with hospital medical staff tending to patients in the back of ambulances.
More than three-quarters (77%) of paramedics and emergency medical technicians said they have had to look after people in the back of ambulances in the past year while stuck outside emergency departments. Two-thirds (68%) have waited in hospital corridors, or in other locations, with one paramedic often caring for several patients to allow colleagues to respond to other calls.
More than two-thirds also reported patients’ health deteriorating during long waits, and one in 20 (5%) said people have died in their care because of long delays in being admitted.
PRCS workers bidding farewell to the 8 PRCS workers who were targeted and killed by Israel. Photo: PRCS
The mass killings tainted the supposedly joyful occasion in Gaza with blood, and replaced celebrations with funerals.
Over 60 Palestinians were killed in multiple Israeli airstrikes that rocked different parts of the Gaza strip, on Sunday, March 30, which also marked the first day of Eid Al-Fitr holiday.
The Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) intensified their aerial attacks on the besieged enclave in the early hours of Sunday and throughout the day. However, hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza gathered to perform Eid prayers atop the rubble of demolished mosques, in a clear message to the world that their will to survive is greater than Israel’s destruction.
Israel deliberately targeted rescue teams in Rafah
The first day of Eid saw another incident of tragedy for the people of Gaza, after the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) announced that it retrieved the bodies of 14 aid workers in Rafah, southern Gaza. The 14 included eight PRCS medics, five staff members of the Palestinian Civil Defense agency, and an employee working with a UN agency.
The recovery of the bodies was announced six days after the PRCS had lost contact with the rescue teams. The release of satellite images exclusively obtained by Al Jazeera demonstrated that the IOF destroyed at least five rescue vehicles belonging to the PRCS and the Civil Defense, who were on a humanitarian mission in Tel al-Sultan neighborhood in Rafah. The IOF did so after they targeted the teams of both organizations, which included 15 volunteers.
Mourning its executed staff, the PRCS said in a statement that “they were targeted by the Israeli occupation forces while performing their humanitarian duties as they were heading to the Hashashin area of Rafah to provide first aid to a number of people injured by Israeli shelling in the area.” The organization added that a ninth medic remains missing.
The PRCS called the massacre a “tragedy” not only for the organization “but also for humanitarian work and humanity.” Emphasizing that the incident was a deliberate execution the PRCS said that the rescue teams were targeted by the IOF “despite the protected status of their mission and the Red Crescent emblem.”
It also pointed out that the incident “can only be considered a war crime punishable under international humanitarian law, which the occupation continues to violate before the eyes of the entire world.”
Meanwhile, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) expressed its outrage at the deaths of eight medics from the PRCS.
The IFRC stressed that when the medics were killed, their ambulance vehicle was “clearly marked” and they were wearing emblems that “should have protected them.”
“I am heartbroken. These dedicated ambulance workers were responding to wounded people. They were humanitarians. They wore emblems that should have protected them; their ambulances were clearly marked. They should have returned to their families; they did not.” IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain stated.
“Even in the most complex conflict zones, there are rules. These rules of International Humanitarian Law could not be clearer – civilians must be protected; humanitarians must be protected. Health services must be protected.” He added.
Genocide denier and Current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer is quoted that he supports Zionism without qualification. He also confirms that UK air force support has been essential in Israel’s mass-murdering genocide. Includes URLs https://www.declassifieduk.org/keir-starmers-100-spy-flights-over-gaza-in-support-of-israel/ and https://youtu.be/O74hZCKKdpAUK Labour Party Shadow Foreign Secretary repeatedly heckled at a speech to the Fabian Society over his and the Labour Party’s support for and complicity in Israel’s genocide of Gaza.
Palestinian paramedic Maha Wafi, 43, walks past destroyed ambulances destroyed by Israeli attacks in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip on September 15, 2024. (Photo: Bashar Taleb/AFP via Getty Images)
“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” the head of the inquiry stressed.
For the second time this year, a United Nations commission tasked with investigating Israel’s conduct during its yearlong invasion and blockade of Gaza has found that the U.S.-armed Israeli military is committing crimes against humanity against Palestinians.
The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory released a report Thursday detailing how “Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s healthcare system as part of a broader assault on Gaza, committing war crimes and the crime against humanity of extermination with relentless and deliberate attacks on medical personnel and facilities.”
“The commission also investigated the treatment of Palestinian detainees in Israel and of Israeli and foreign hostages in Gaza since October 7, 2023 and concluded that Israel and Palestinian armed groups are responsible for torture and sexual and gender-based violence,” the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) said in a summary of the report.
The report cites the U.N. World Health Organization’s findings that Israel carried out 498 attacks on healthcare facilities in the Gaza Strip between October 7, 2023—when Hamas launched the deadliest-ever attack on Israel—and July 30, 2024.
“A total of 747 persons were killed directly in those attacks, and 969 others were injured, and 110 facilities were affected,” the publication states. The report calls the attacks “widespread and systematic.”
.@UN Commission of Inquiry says in a new report that #Israel has perpetrated a concerted policy to destroy #Gaza’s healthcare system; war crimes & crimes against humanity committed in treatment of Palestinian detainees & Israeli & foreign hostages.
— United Nations Human Rights Council | 📍#HRC57 (@UN_HRC) October 10, 2024
The commission continued:
Israeli security forces carried out air strikes against hospitals, causing considerable damage to buildings and surroundings, as well as multiple casualties; surrounded and besieged hospital premises; prevented the entry of goods and medical equipment and exit/entry of civilians; issued evacuation orders but prevented safe evacuations; and raided hospitals, arresting hospital staff and patients. Israeli security forces also obstructed access by humanitarian agencies.
“Israel must immediately stop its unprecedented wanton destruction of healthcare facilities in Gaza,” said commission chair Navi Pillay. “By targeting healthcare facilities, Israel is targeting the right to health itself with significant long-term detrimental effects on the civilian population. Children in particular have borne the brunt of these attacks, suffering both directly and indirectly from the collapse of the health system.”
OHCHR said that “attacks on medical facilities in Gaza, particularly those devoted to pediatric and neonatal care, have led to incalculable suffering of child patients, including newborns.”
“In continuing these attacks, Israel has violated children’s right to life, denied children access to basic healthcare, and deliberately inflicted conditions of life resulting in the destruction of generations of Palestinian children and, potentially, the Palestinian people as a group,” the agency added.
The commission’s inquiry found that as of July 15, “113 ambulances had been attacked and at least 61 had been damaged,” including vehicles used by the U.N., International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS), and other organizations.
Israel bombed an ambulance carrying injured people in the middle of a crowd of civilians today.pic.twitter.com/SARWx2TO3Q
“Access was also reduced owing to closure of areas by Israeli security forces, [and] delays in coordination of safe routes, checkpoints, searches, or destruction of roads,” the report notes.
The commission investigated the January 29 attack that killed 6-year-old Hind Rajab and six of her relatives, as well as two paramedics who had Israeli permission to attempt to rescue them.
“They were attacked while trying to evacuate in their car,” the report said of the family. “The ambulance, carrying two paramedics, Yousef Zeino and Ahmed al-Madhoun, was dispatched after its route had been coordinated with Israeli security forces. It was hit by a tank shell at a distance of some 50 meters from the family’s car.”
“Hind was still alive at the time that the ambulance was dispatched,” the publication noted. “The presence of Israeli security forces in the area prevented access. As a result, the family members’ bodies could not be retrieved from their bullet-ridden car until 12 days after the incident.”
Israel Defense Forces officials have repeatedly claimed that no IDF troops were in the area at the time of the attack. Multiple journalistic investigations, including one published Tuesday by Sky News, showed that Israeli tank and machine gun fire killed the family and paramedics.
.@prem_thakker: [Hind Rajab] is illustrative of 10s of thousands of kids killed…how can US keep unconditionally sending weapons if this is how 🇮🇱 is dealing with investigations of potential violations
The new report’s authors also noted that “hundreds of medical personnel, including three hospital directors and the head of an orthopedic department, as well as patients and journalists were arrested by Israeli security forces” during raids on Gaza medical facilities.
“Reportedly, 128 health workers remain detained by Israeli authorities as of July 15, including four PRCS staff members,” the publication states.
“The institutionalized mistreatment of Palestinian detainees, a longstanding characteristic of the occupation, took place under direct orders from the Israeli minister in charge of the prison system, Itamar Ben-Gvir, and was fueled by Israeli government statements inciting violence and retribution,” said OHCHR.
Released Palestinian doctor Khaled Al-Sarr tells the horrific conditions & brutal torture faced by Palestinian prisoners being held inside israeli jails pic.twitter.com/tdphFnBV5E
The commission report also detailed crimes committed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups against Israelis on and after October 7, 2023, when more than 1,100 Israelis and others were killed—at least some by so-called “friendly fire” and under the fratricidal Hannibal Directive—and over 240 people abducted.
Hostages “were mistreated to inflict physical pain and severe mental suffering, including physical violence, abuse, sexual violence, forced isolation, limited access to hygiene facilities, water and food, threats and humiliation,” OHCHR said. “Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups committed the war crimes of torture, inhuman or cruel treatment, and the crimes against humanity of enforced disappearance and other inhumane acts causing great suffering or serious injury.”
In June, the same U.N. commission found Israel’s far-right government responsible for a range of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, including “extermination, torture, forcible transfer, and the use of starvation as a weapon of warfare.”
Over the course of its 370-day assault on Gaza, Israeli forces have killed at least 42,010 Palestinians in the coastal enclave—most of them women and children—and wounded more than 97,700 others, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health and international agencies.
At least 10,000 Palestinians are missing and believed to be dead and buried beneath the rubble of hundreds of thousands of bombed buildings. Israel’s “complete siege” of Gaza has forcibly displaced more than 90% of Gaza’s 2.3 million people, and has contributed to the starvation and sickening of hundreds of thousands of Gazans.
Israel is on trial for genocide at the U.N. International Court of Justice. Meanwhile, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khan is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders—at least one of whom, political chief Ismail Haniyeh, has been assassinated—for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, including extermination.
A broken stethoscope and surgical glove are seen after Israeli warplanes bombed a building in the Bachoura area of Beirut, Lebanon on October 3, 2024. (Photo: Murat Sengul/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“I’m afraid first about my safety and about my family’s safety because there’s no safe place in Lebanon now,” said one physician.
The head of the United Nations World Health Organization said Thursday that Israeli forces killed 28 healthcare workers in Lebanon over the previous 24 hours, and that 73 medical personnel are among the nearly 2,000 Lebanese killed during Israel’s bombing and invasion of its northern neighbor.
“In southern Lebanon, 37 health facilities have been closed, while in Beirut, three hospitals have been forced to fully evacuate staff and patients, and another two were partially evacuated,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said during a press conference in Geneva. “And yet healthcare continues to come under attack. In Lebanon alone, 28 health workers have been killed in the last 24 hours.”
Tedros said the WHO “calls on urgent facilitation of flights to deliver health supplies to Lebanon,” adding, “Lives depend on it!”
The health system’s capacity in #Lebanon is deteriorating. @WHO’s medical supplies cannot be delivered due to the almost complete closure of Beirut’s airport.
WHO calls on urgent facilitation of flights to deliver health supplies to Lebanon. Lives depend on it! pic.twitter.com/zyCdS1bVZF
Lebanese Health Minister Firas Al-Abiad said separately Thursday that more than 40 paramedics and firefighters have been killed by Israeli forces over the previous three days.
Dr. Abdinasir Abubakar, the acting WHO representative in Lebanon, said that “most of those healthcare workers killed in the last 24 hours, most of them—actually, all of them—were on duty.”
“Some of them were in the ambulances, some of them were in the health facilities,” Abubakar added. “They were on duty trying to help civilians who have been wounded in the conflict.”
Dr. Fathalla Fattouh, the head cardiovascular and thoracic surgeon at Rafik Hariri University Hospital (RHUH) in Jnah, just outside Beirut, described the chaos he witnessed firsthand, including “a surge of nearly identical injuries—amputations, eye trauma, and shattered hip and femur bones—straining the hospital’s capacity to a near-breaking point.”
“We were forced to make difficult decisions,” he added. “I believe that we did our best relying on available capacities, but with the escalation of events we need to plan for the worst.”
Sara, a surgeon at the hospital, said that “there are only two hospitals in Lebanon prepared to treat burn patients, and once they were at capacity, we were left with nowhere to send the patients we received.”
“It was a feeling of helplessness that we had never experienced before,” she added.
Some doctors admitted fearing for their lives.
“It’s hard to work in fear,” Dr. Mohammad Taoube, who heads the emergency room at an undisclosed hospital in southern Lebanon, told Sky News on Wednesday. “I’m afraid first about my safety and about my family’s safety because there’s no safe place in Lebanon now.”
According to figures provided by the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean, Israeli forces have killed 1,974 people in Lebanon—including at least 127 children—while wounding 9,384 others in recent weeks.
— WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean (@WHOEMRO) October 4, 2024
At least one American has been killed by Israeli bombing of Lebanon this week. Hajj Kamel Ahmad Jawad, 56, of Dearborn, Michigan was killed Tuesday while in Nabatieth in southern Lebanon caring for his sick mother and volunteering to help elderly, disabled, and injured patients at a local hospital.
The Nabatieth area has come under heavy Israeli bombardment. Local journalists said the city’s main hospital “came under direct Israeli fire” on Friday and that two nurses were killed.
Lebanese officials said Friday that more than 1.2 million people have been forcibly displaced amid Israel’s recent bombing and invasion of their country. The Israeli campaign comes amid attacks by the political and paramilitary group Hezbollah, whose rockets and other projectiles have killed or wounded scores of Israelis and forced tens of thousands from their homes.
Residents of southern Lebanon described the terror of coming under Israeli bombardment and having to flee for their lives. One woman, Fatima, and her 14-year-old daughter Zeinab said they were in their home preparing for a school exam when the shelling started.
“My mother told us to pack our things quickly, and we left in a rush,” Zeinab told the U.N. Children’s Fund on Thursday. “My siblings were crying. The journey was terrifying.”
“The shelling was all around us, and the sound of explosions echoed everywhere,” she said while crying. “We miss home dearly and yearn to return.”
Tedros noted that since last October, when Hezbollah began launching rockets at Israel in solidarity with Gaza after Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, over 1 million Lebanese have been displaced, with many seeking refuge in neighboring Syria.
He also said that “since the 7th of October last year, more than 1,500 people have been killed in Israel, almost 42,000 in Gaza, and more than 700 in the West Bank.”
“In addition,” Tedros added, “more than 10,000 people are missing in Gaza, and 1.9 million people are displaced, while 101 hostages taken from Israel remain in Gaza.”
Hundreds of Palestinians working in the health sector have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, who have deliberately targeted medical workers. Israeli troops have also allegedly tortured doctors and other medical workers after kidnapping them from the coastal enclave.
Tedros on Thursday stressed the need for “deescalation of the conflict; for healthcare to be protected and not attacked; for access routes to be secured and supplies delivered; and for a cease-fire, a political solution, and peace.”
Mourners carry the body of Palestinian doctor Hani al-Jaafarawi, Gaza’s ambulance and emergency teams chief, during his funeral in Gaza City, Gaza on June 24, 2024. (Photo: Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP via Getty Images)
“This cannot be allowed to continue any longer,” said one advocate. “Every potential serious violation must be independently investigated and those responsible brought to justice.”
Doctors and humanitarian organizations demanded international investigations and action on Wednesday after the United Nations announced that Israel’s military has now killed 500 healthcare workers in Gaza—roughly two per day on average—during its nearly nine-month assault on the besieged Palestinian enclave.
The U.N. Human Rights Office said in a statement Tuesday that Israeli forces’ killing of hundreds of healthcare workers has “occurred against the backdrop of systematic attacks on hospitals and other medical facilities in violation of the laws of war.” The World Health Organization has documented more than 460 attacks on healthcare workers and infrastructure in Gaza since October 7.
“The latest health worker reportedly killed was Mr. Hani Al Ja’afarwi, head of Emergency and Ambulance Services at a health clinic in Gaza City on 23 June 2024,” said the U.N. Human Rights Office. “Many health workers have also died with their family members when residential buildings were struck by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).”
The U.N.’s latest tally did not include Fadi Al-Wadiya, a 33-year-old Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) staffer who was killed along with five other people Tuesday in an attack in Gaza City. MSF did not explicitly assign blame for the attack, which the group described as “yet another brutal example of the senseless killing of Palestinian civilians and healthcare workers in Gaza.”
Rohan Talbot, director of advocacy and campaigns at Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), said Wednesday that “hospitals, medical staff, and civilians all have protected status under international law, law that the Israel military has flagrantly ignored every day through its repeated targeting of healthcare facilities and staff.”
“Though now happening at an unprecedented rate in Gaza, attacks on Palestinian healthcare by the Israeli military have recurred over many years, ever-worsening because of chronic impunity,” said Talbot. “This cannot be allowed to continue any longer. Every potential serious violation must be independently investigated and those responsible brought to justice.”
🚨An Israeli military airstrike has killed Hani al-Jaafarawi, the director of Gaza’s Ambulance and Emergency Department during a strike on a clinic in Gaza City.
— Medical Aid for Palestinians (@MedicalAidPal) June 25, 2024
Not a single hospital is fully functioning in the Gaza Strip after months of relentless Israeli bombing, and medical workers have been forced to treat airstrike victims and other patients in overwhelmed facilities without necessary equipment and medications, including anesthesia.
As Israel’s blockade leaves the occupied territory’s population without sufficient access to clean water and other essentials, infectious diseases have been spreading rapidly as the health crisis spirals out of control, starvation proliferates, and the death toll mounts.
“Systematic attacks on healthcare by Israeli forces are exacerbating the worst humanitarian crisis ever seen in Gaza,” MAP said Wednesday. “More than 37,000 Palestinians have been killed and at least 86,000 injured since Israel’s assault began, with an estimated 10,000 still trapped under rubble, most presumed dead. Instead of being able to safely provide medical care for those in urgent need, Palestinian healthcare workers have themselves come under both indiscriminate and apparent targeted attack by the Israeli military.”
Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who volunteered in a hospital with MAP earlier this year, said that “Palestinian healthcare workers have told me that when they leave the hospital, civilians give them civilian clothing because wearing scrubs is putting a target sticker on their back.”
“This is how systematically healthcare has been targeted in Gaza,” Haj-Hassan added.
Haider Al-Qudra, executive director of the Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) in Gaza, told MAP that “as long as the international community does not take any measures against Israeli forces that continue to violate international humanitarian law, we will lose more personnel working to meet the health and humanitarian needs of citizens on the frontline.”
“Because of this systematic targeting from Israeli forces,” said Al-Qudra, “34 PRCS staff have lost their lives, most of them emergency medical services staff, including 19 while they tried to respond to emergency calls from citizens.”
Zionist Keir Starmes is quoted “I support Zionism without qualification.” He’s asked whether that means that he supports Zionism under all circumstances, whatever Zionists do.
