Gaza death toll rises to 3500; 13,000 injured  

The death toll resulting from the ongoing barbaric Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip running for 12 days has now risen to 3,500 dead, including 700 children and more than 500 women, with the number of injured reaching about 13,500, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health statistics.
In a press conference on Wednesday, Palestinian Health Minister Mai Al Kailah said that the Gaza Strip's health sector is suffering from a severe shortage of medicines, major difficulty reaching hospitals, water outages, and a deterioration in the sewage system, explaining that these issues increase the risk of communicable disease outbreaks in the besieged sector.
Al Kailah added that citizens have major difficulty accessing the healthcare system and hospitals as a result of constant Israeli occupation forces' bombardments that do not exclude hospitals and primary healthcare centers, indicating that the situation is exacerbated by a disruption in medicine supply chains.
Regarding communicable diseases and epidemic cases, the minister pointed out that the water outage, the lack of hygiene tools and personal care supplies, the lack of harmonization of the sanitation system and the deterioration of large parts of it as a result of the Israeli aggression, in addition to overcrowding in shelter centers, increases the risk of the spread of communicable and infectious diseases in a way that threatens of a real health care disaster.
She said that the Israeli occupation is violating the international humanitarian law regarding the protection of medical personnel, and is instead targeting medical personnel.