The World Health Organization said on Thursday that there are no longer functioning hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip, describing the scenes of patients left without food and water as “unbearable.”

The United Nations organization reported that it led missions to two hospitals that were severely damaged, namely Al-Shifa and Al-Ahly Al-Arabi “Al-Baptist” in the northern Gaza Strip on Wednesday.

The representative of the World Health Organization in Palestine, Richard Peppercorn, said, “Our teams cannot describe the catastrophic situation facing the patients and medical teams” who are still there.

The ongoing Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip since October 7 has resulted in the death of more than 20,000 citizens, 70% of whom are women and children.

The World Health Organization said last month that the emergency department at Al-Shifa Medical Complex, the largest hospital in the Strip, had become a “bloodbath.”

Al-Ahli Hospital became the last hospital institution still in service in the northern Gaza Strip, but its administration announced that the facility would stop working on Tuesday after the Israeli occupation forces stormed it.

The WHO-led mission revealed that Al-Ahli Hospital, which two days ago was “crowded with patients in need of emergency care,” is now “an empty shell,” Pepperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

He added, "There are no longer operating rooms due to the lack of fuel, electricity, medical supplies, and medical staff, including surgeons and other specialists. They have stopped working completely."

Of Gaza's 36 total hospitals, only nine are now partially functioning, all in the south.

"There are no longer hospitals in service in the north," Pepperkorn continued.

Hospitals protected under international humanitarian law have been repeatedly subjected to Israeli bombing in Gaza since the start of the aggression.

Pepperkorn pointed out that although the goal of the mission's visit on Wednesday was to deliver fuel, the lack of security guarantees meant that they could only deliver medical supplies and medicines, but that was not enough, according to him.

"Without fuel, crews and other essentials, medicines will not make a difference and all patients will die slowly and painfully," he explained.

He said that in Al-Ahli Hospital, there are only 10 employees left who are doing everything in their power to provide basic first aid, while about 80 patients are taking refuge in a church on the hospital grounds and in the orthopedic department.

For his part, Sean Casey, head of the World Health Organization missions to Gaza, who was part of this mission, described the conditions as “incredible.”

At Al-Ahli Hospital, the team was walking in its yard, where bodies were piled up wrapped in white sheets, while the sound of gunfire was heard near the site, according to what Casey told reporters from Rafah in southern Gaza.

“In the church, we saw an unbearable scene,” Casey recounted, describing 30 patients, including young children and some seriously injured, begging for water, not care.

"Currently, it is a place where people wait to die," he added.

He renewed the increasingly urgent call for a ceasefire to allow the entry of sufficient amounts of aid as well as the evacuation of a larger number of patients from Gaza. Asked if time was running out, Casey said: "I think it's too late."

He explained, "We are dealing with starving adults and children... Everywhere we go, people ask us for food. Even in hospitals... people with bleeding wounds ask for food."

He concluded by saying, "If that is not an indication of despair, I don't know what is."