12 June 2025
Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) calls for the immediate protection of Nasser Hospital and the hundreds of patients and healthcare workers inside, as Israeli military attacks nearby and forced displacement orders threaten to force the hospital completely out of service.
As of 3pm local time on 12 June, the Israeli military issued forced displacement orders in the immediate areas surrounding the hospital. Israeli tanks and troops are reported to be within striking distance and hospital staff fear an imminent invasion.
Nasser is the last major functioning hospital in southern Gaza, and is depended on by hundreds of thousands of people for healthcare. The hospital has 540 beds but is currently operating at 150% occupancy, with 51 patients in the intensive care unit whose lives are in imminent danger if the hospital ceases to function. In recent days, the hospital has faced intensifying threats from nearby Israeli military attacks and an immense influx of injuries, many of them from attacks at US-supported Israeli militarised distribution points.
Dr Mohammad Saqr, Director of Nursing at Nasser Hospital, said: “The Israeli army is not far from the hospital, and we fear a potential incursion or attack. If we are forced to stop working, the healthcare system in southern Gaza will collapse entirely.”
“The situation has reached a catastrophic level. We are resorting to placing patients in corridors and on balconies as a last resort, because we cannot turn our backs on them.”
Dr Saqr also reports that most of the patients received at the hospital have been injured by direct sniper fire to the head or chest, and 95% of incoming patients are acutely malnourished. Severe shortages of electricity are forcing some surgeries to be performed by flashlight.
Fikr Shalltoot, MAP's Gaza Director, said: “If Nasser Hospital is forced to shut down the outcome would be beyond catastrophic. Hundreds of thousands of people will lose access to critical health services and many will die and suffer as a result. There is nowhere else for them to go. Israel’s systematic attacks on hospitals are forcing Gaza’s healthcare system closer and closer to total annihilation.”
Steve Cutts, MAP’s Interim CEO, said: “Through its repeated attacks on hospitals, the Israeli military has crossed every red line of international law and basic humanity. UN experts and human rights groups have concluded that Israel is perpetrating extermination and genocide against the Palestinian people. What will it take for our political leaders to act decisively to stop these atrocities?”
MAP has documented a months-long pattern of systematic Israeli military attacks on Gaza’s hospitals. In February, Israeli forces destroyed Gaza’s only dedicated cancer hospital, the Turkish-Palestinian Friendship Hospital. In May, the European Gaza Hospital was forced to shut down and just this week, the World Health Organisation reported that Al Amal Hospital in Khan Younis is out of service – repeated Israeli military attacks.
In the past two months, the Israeli military has attacked Nasser Hospital at least three times. If the hospital is attacked or forced to shut down, Palestinians in the south will be left with just a few field hospitals, which doctors report can only serve a couple of hundred patients. In the aftermath of previous invasions of the hospital, returning staff reported discovering hundreds of bodies in mass graves buried outside.
These are not isolated incidents but part of the systematic dismantling of Gaza’s already fragile health system, which an independent United Nations Commission found amounts to the crime of extermination. On 13 May, UN Relief Chief Tom Fletcher, called on the UN Security Council members to “act decisively to prevent genocide” in Gaza.
MAP urgently calls on the UK Government and international community to immediately protect Nasser Hospital and all Palestinian healthcare facilities and workers in Gaza, ensure accountability, and end the systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health system. The UK must not be an ally to atrocities.
