Since the war in Gaza began following Hamas’ deadly Oct 7, 2023 attack inside Israel, fewer than 5,000 people have been granted medical evacuations out of the territory.
Only 282 have meanwhile been able to leave since Israel shuttered Gaza’s main Rafah border crossing in early May, Peeperkorn said, adding that around a third of them had been children.
Peeperkorn lamented the “ad hoc” access to desperately-needed medical evacuations from Gaza.
“What we need is regular access … which would be properly supported, facilitated and not made unnecessarily dangerous,” he said.
“We need medical corridors, and the first medical corridor we basically request to be restored is the traditional referral pathway from Gaza to East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and … a second medical corridor to Egypt should be open again, and maybe to Jordan.”
Hamas’ Oct 7, 2023 attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 43,391 people in Gaza, most of them civilians, according to Gaza health ministry figures which the UN considers to be reliable.
