Extract from ABC News
Lobna al-Azaiza, a Palestinian pediatrician, is one of the many medical professionals working through the Israeli invasion of Gaza. (Reuters: Ramadan Abed)
"I shall do by my patients as I would be done by," reads the Hippocratic Oath taken by physicians before they begin practising.
In Gaza, everyone could be a patient, including those whose work it is to help or report what's happening: doctors, nurses, rescue workers and journalists.
The UN has described the healthcare situation in Gaza as "apocalyptic", without basic supplies or aid. (Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)
While essential workers should be protected by the Geneva Conventions, a set of international treaties that prohibit civilians from being targeted by military actions, in Gaza hundreds have lost their lives or been seriously wounded, UN and local health figures show.
This comes amid widespread allegations of Israel's targeting of healthcare and media staff, claims that Israel denies.
Killed doing their job
Among more than 44,000 dead in Gaza are hundreds of nurses, doctors, physicians and other medical staff, according to Palestinian health authorities and the UN's human rights office.
The Israeli military has repeatedly targeted hospitals and medical facilities such as Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, the UN and local journalists report, as Israel claims Hamas uses them as weapons facilities and command centres.
At least three Palestinian doctors have died while in Israeli custody, an independent UN expert said, while condemning the death of Dr Ziad Eldalou, who died after being detained working at Al Shifa Hospital in March 2024.
Tlaleng Mofokeng, a UN health special rapporteur, said Israel had a "blatant disregard for the right to health in Gaza".
"The practice of medicine is never a crime during conflict — but targeted killing of healthcare workers is. Israel must stop," Ms Mofokeng said.
The IDF media team said they were unable to "fully address" the inquiry related to Dr Eldalou because his ID number was not provided, in a response to detailed questions from the ABC.
However, a spokesperson said the Israeli military "recognises the importance of the special protections given to medical teams under international humanitarian law and takes action to prevent harm to them".
Under international law, civilian targets such as hospitals are no longer protected if they are used for military purposes — which Israel has used to justify strikes on hospitals across Gaza, saying they are used by Hamas for storing weapons and harbouring militants.
The UN's human rights office has denounced the "systematic attacks", which it says violates the rules of war.
Another 128 healthcare workers are arbitrarily detained by Israeli forces, the World Health Organisation said in September, and at least 320 aid workers, including 230 UN staff, have been killed in Gaza, according to the UN.
WHO figures show at least 846 people have been killed in attacks on healthcare facilities, with 1,237 injured.
Healthcare Workers Watch, an NGO tracking attacks on medical staff and facilities worldwide, has confirmed the killing of 587 healthcare staff in Gaza since October 2023, and is working to verify another 420 deaths.
Even first responders pulling the injured and dead from rubble amid constant Israeli air strikes say they are under attack.
Gaza's civil defence and rescue service announced on October 25 it was halting operations entirely in northern Gaza, saying they were being constantly targeted by the Israeli army.
"We are unable to provide humanitarian services to citizens in the northern governorate of the Gaza Strip due to threats from Israeli occupation forces, who have threatened to kill and bomb our teams if they remain inside Jabalia camp," said Mahmud Bassal, the agency's spokesperson.
What are the dangers in Gaza?
Medical staff such as doctors and nurses, journalists, rescue workers and others face increasingly dire conditions in Gaza; little to no medical supplies, reports of arbitrary detention and torture, working amid constant shelling — particularly the "apocalyptic" situation in north Gaza, besieged by Israeli forces for weeks, according to the heads of 15 UN bodies.
Over 44,000 Palestinians have been killed since October 2023 in Gaza by Israeli strikes, local health authorities report. (Reuters: Mohammed Salem)
Dr Sanjay Adusumilli, an Australian doctor who worked in Al-Aqsa Hospital in central Gaza during April and May 2024, said his Palestinian colleagues were "incredibly fearful".
"Even just travelling from where they're staying to the hospital, they feel like they're in immense danger. There's always a risk of being taken hostage or assaulted," he said.
"Doctors ring me and call me saying they just want to die, they just want to have a peaceful death and be left alone," he told the ABC.
British surgeon Nizam Mamode worked in Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza in August and September 2024, and said he and his Palestinian colleagues lived in the hospital 24/7.
He described the medical complex as "barely functional", lacking in basic medical equipment such as gauze, gloves, surgical equipment or soap.
Dr Mamode said he had been told by staff at the hospital of an Israeli assault in February 2024, during which many were detained and some died.
According to the local staff, Israeli soldiers humiliated them by tying their hands, forcing them to kneel and wear hoods for hours, and stripped one female medical student of her clothes before forcing her to walk home in her undergarments.
The IDF described the February 2024 operation in Nasser Hospital as a "precise and limited" action against what it called "terrorist activity in the area.
The spokesperson said 200 people had been detained in the hospital as "terror suspects" and "minimal disruption" to the hospital's activities was made.
"What's difficult to convey is that so many of the Palestinian staff and people — it's not as if they're concerned about being a target," Dr Mamode told the ABC.
"It's a sense of inevitability that they will die in this war because it's relentless, it's been day after day."
"The sense of indiscriminate and persistent targeting of civilians is difficult to convey."
In October, an independent UN commission found a "concerted policy to destroy Gaza's healthcare system" was being carried out by Israel, including "wanton destruction" of hospitals, deliberate killings, detention and torture of medical personnel — all of which the commission declared war crimes.
Journalists increasingly under fire
Journalists provide crucial on-the-ground perspectives in war zones, relaying key events and casualties using text, images, video and audio to report.
However, foreign journalists have been barred from entering Gaza, Reporters Without Borders campaign director Rebecca Vincent said, leaving Palestinian journalists inside Gaza as the main bridge for information to flow to the outside world.
As a result, Palestinian journalists are reporting on the Israeli invasion and conflict while also coping with its impacts: displacement, hunger and possible injury or death under constant air strikes and drone attacks.
"Israeli forces have done everything in their power to prevent coverage of what is happening in Gaza, and have systematically targeted journalists who have taken tremendous risks to do their jobs," Ms Vincent said.
At least 131 journalists, camera operators and media workers have been killed in Gaza since October 2023; a database run by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) records their names, nationalities and place of death.
Most are Palestinian, with three Lebanese and two Israelis included in the death toll.
Palestinian journalists killed in increasing numbers in Gaza
The CPJ has determined at least four of those killed were directly targeted by Israeli forces, with another 20 cases under investigation, and says it has unconfirmed reports of more journalists being killed, missing or injured.
Three Palestinian journalists were killed on October 27 by an Israeli air strike that hit a school being used as a shelter by displaced families, Hamas-run media in the strip said.
Another three journalists were killed in southern Lebanon on October 25 after the Israeli military struck their guesthouse, with CPJ saying Israel had a "long-standing pattern of impunity in journalist killings" and alleging the Israeli military directly targeted them.
"The IDF takes all operationally feasible measures to mitigate harm to civilians, including journalists," a spokesperson said in response to these claims.
CPJ's program director Carlos Martinez de la Serna said journalists in Gaza had been paying with their lives for their reporting.
"Every time a journalist is killed, injured, arrested, or forced to go to exile, we lose fragments of the truth," he said.
"Those responsible for these casualties face dual trials: one under international law and another before history's unforgiving gaze."
Al Jazeera correspondent Hossam Shbat, one of six journalists accused by Israel of working as Hamas operatives in October, said in a Instagram post that the "terrorist" label was "signalling the start of a deliberate effort to target us and obscure the massacres that are happening, particularly in northern Gaza".
Shbat said Israeli snipers had shot directly at him and colleagues while working, and said a "complete media blackout" was the Israeli military's goal.
'What crime are journalists committing to be labelled as terrorists?" he asked.
'All operationally feasible measures'
Israel has repeatedly stated it does not deliberately target doctors, journalists or others working in a civilian capacity.
The ABC put a series of questions to the Israeli military regarding Hossam Shbat's claims, which the IDF rejected as false.
They repeated the allegation that the six Al Jazeera journalists including Shbat were members of Hamas, saying this made them lawful targets under international law.
Each of the six journalists denies these claims.
The Gaza health ministry said 44,056 people have been killed since October 7, 2023, with more than 100,000 people injured.
The UN has condemned strikes on civilian homes and hospitals across Gaza, which Israel says Hamas uses for military purposes. (Reuters: Dawoud Abu Alkas)
The Palestinian civil emergency service estimates that the bodies of 10,000 people may be trapped under the rubble, which would take the reported death toll to more than 50,000.
Hamas militants killed around 1,200 Israelis that day, and still hold dozens of some 250 hostages they took back to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies.
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