23 September 2025
The Israeli military’s destruction of a vital Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) clinic is yet another assault on Gaza’s healthcare system. Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) stands with the PMRS and their staff.
On 22 September, an Israeli military airstrike destroyed Al Samer clinic, which had been providing healthcare services since 2006. The clinic has been reduced to rubble and its services shut down.
The clinic was a cornerstone of community health and provided vital primary healthcare, mental health support, cancer care, blood donation, physiotherapy and women’s services. Forty-five staff members, including cardiologists and nutritionists, have lost their place of work and their patients have been left without care.
PMRS staff were given just 10 minutes to evacuate before the clinic was struck. The attack has left the clinic completely destroyed and unusable, including its laboratories and its assistive devices centre.
Fikr Shalltoot, MAP’s Gaza Director, said: “We are outraged to learn that once again vital healthcare services have been targeted by the Israeli military. This facility was a lifeline for hundreds of people every day. The rate of Israel’s systematic destruction of healthcare in Gaza is relentless, we are struggling to keep up with all the attacks on health services. Healthcare workers and facilities must be protected, and international humanitarian law must be upheld. How many more times must we repeat these demands to the international community before action will be taken to stop Israel’s genocide in Gaza?”
In a statement, the Palestinian Medical Relief Society said: “Families, patients, and our staff were forced to flee within minutes, carrying nothing but what they could hold in their hands...This was not just an attack on a building — it was an attack on healthcare, on the right to safety, and on the dignity of our people. It is part of a systematic campaign of forced displacement and the dismantling of what little remains of Gaza’s health system.”
MAP has partnered with PMRS in Gaza in the past, including in supporting blood donation campaigns, continues to work with them in the occupied West Bank.
In the past three weeks alone, PMRS reports that three of their clinics have been targeted in Israeli military attacks. Two have been completely destroyed; the Al-Shatae primary healthcare clinic and Omar al-Mukhtar clinic, and the Tal al-Hawa clinic has been partially damaged.
MAP urgently calls on world leaders, including those in the UK, to act to protect Gaza’s healthcare system, enforce an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and pressure Israel to lift its total blockade of Gaza. We demand that the UK and other states uphold their legal duty to prevent and stop genocide, including by suspending arms transfers to Israel and supporting international accountability.