1,000 patients died awaiting evacuation from Gaza since July 2024: WHO
Hamas says Miami talks must end Israel’s Gaza truce ‘violations’
GAZA: More than 1,000 patients have died while waiting for urgent medical evacuation from war-ravaged Gaza in the last year and a half, the World Health Organisation (WHO) said on Friday.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said on X that the UN agency and its partners had “evacuated over 10,600 patients from Gaza with severe health conditions, including over 5,600 children” since the start of the war more than two years ago.
But he warned that “many more patients remain in Gaza awaiting evacuation to receive appropriate healthcare”.
Citing numbers from the health ministry in Gaza, Tedros said that 1,092 patients were known to have died while awaiting medical evacuation just between July 2024 and November 28, 2025.
“This figure is likely underreported,” he warned, calling on “more countries to open doors to patients from Gaza, and for medical evacuation to the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, to be restored”.
“Lives depend on it.”
The WHO has previously estimated that more than 16,500 patients still need treatment outside of Gaza, while a top official with the charity Doctors Without Borders told AFP earlier this month the actual number was likely “three to four times that number”. Up to December 1, over 30 countries had taken patients from Gaza, but only a handful, including Egypt and the United Arab Emirates, had accepted large numbers.
A US-sponsored ceasefire has halted fighting in Gaza, which began after Hamas’s deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
But the deal, in effect since October 10, remains fragile as Israel and Hamas accuse each other almost daily of violations.
Meanwhile, a top Hamas official said that talks in Miami on Friday to advance the next phase of the Gaza ceasefire must aim to end Israeli truce “violations” in the Palestinian territory.
US President Donald Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, is to meet senior officials from Qatar, Egypt and Turkey in Florida on Friday, amid fears that efforts to reach the second stage of the deal are stalling.
“Our people expect these talks to result in an agreement to put an end to ongoing Israeli lawlessness, halt all violations and compel the occupation to abide by the Sharm El-Sheikh agreement,” Hamas political bureau member, Bassem Naim, said.
Under the second stage, Israel is supposed to withdraw from its positions in Gaza, an interim authority is to govern the Palestinian territory instead of Hamas, and an international stabilization force is to be deployed.
But progress in moving to that phase of October’s agreement between Israel and Hamas, which was brokered by Washington and its regional allies, has so far been slow.
The ceasefire also remains fragile with both sides alleging violations, and mediators fearing that Israel and Hamas alike are stalling. Monitoring Desk
