News summary of the war between Israel and Hamas and the situation in Gaza this May 25

The UN humanitarian agency, OCHA, announced on Friday that there were no accessible hospitals left in northern Gaza after the two still functioning hospitals – al-Awda and Kamal Adwan – fell under Israeli siege.

Dr. Husam Abu Safia, director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, told CNN that Israeli forces had partially withdrawn from the area since Saturday morning, though gunfire continues. Safia said she has not been able to reach the facility, but some medical staff are treating patients at the hospital, while other hospital staff were evacuated “a few days ago.”

In a new report released on Friday, OCHA said that according to the WHO, health workers and patients had been evacuated from Kamal Adwan Hospital, with most of them now at Al Helo Hospital in Gaza City.

He also said that Al Awda hospital in northern Gaza was “partially functional” after Israeli forces forced the evacuation of most of the hospital’s staff, patients and their companions, according to the WHO, “but remains inaccessible”. Twelve staff members, including the director, as well as 14 patients and eight companions remained at the scene, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a post on X.

CNN has contacted the Israel Defense Forces.

According to the OCHA report citing the WHO, as of Friday, of Gaza’s 36 hospitals, 15 were only partially functional, 21 hospitals were out of service and there were six functional field hospitals. According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, existing hospitals are operating at more than four times their capacity.

“Lack of fuel, medical supplies and equipment threatens the ability of remaining health facilities to operate,” it warned. It warned that the situation at Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital remained critical. The agency said it was able to deliver 15,000 litres of fuel to the hospital on Friday, but appealed for urgent fuel supplies to avoid an “imminent crisis” in the event of a power cut that could threaten the lives of more than 1,200 wounded patients, newborns and nearly 600 patients with kidney failure who require dialysis treatment.

The UN aid agency has warned that some displaced people in central Gaza are currently surviving on 3% of the minimum level needed to meet their daily water needs and that communicable diseases such as diarrhoea and suspected hepatitis A are on the rise among children under the age of five. People of older age are most affected.

Earlier this week, the head of the WHO called on Israel to ease all restrictions on aid entry into Gaza, saying the main entry route for life-saving medical aid from Egypt into Gaza had been cut off amid an Israeli army operation in the southern city of Rafah.