226 health workers killed in Lebanon since October 7: WHO

AFP :

Nearly 230 health workers have been killed in Lebanon since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza following the October 7 resistance campaign last year, the World Health Organization said on Friday.
In total, the UN health agency said there had been 187 attacks on healthcare in Lebanon in the more than 13 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict.
Between October 7, 2023 and November 18 this year, “we have 226 deaths and 199 injuries in total,” Abdinasir Abubakar, the WHO representative in Lebanon, said via video link from Beirut.
He said “almost 70%” of these had occurred since the tensions escalated into all-out war in September.
Saying this was “an extremely worrying pattern,” he stressed that “depriving civilians of access to lifesaving care and targeting health providers is a breach of international humanitarian law.”
Abubakar said “a hallmark of the conflict in Lebanon is how destructive it has been to health care,” highlighting that 47% of these attacks “have proven fatal to at least one health worker or patient” — the highest percentage of any active conflict today.
By comparison, Abubakar said that only 13.3% of attacks on healthcare globally had fatal outcomes during the same period, pointing to data from a range of conflict situations, including Ukraine, Sudan and the occupied Palestinian territory.
He suggested the high percentage of fatal attacks on healthcare in Lebanon might be due to the fact that “more ambulances have been targeted.”
“And whenever the ambulance is targeted, actually, then you will have three, four or five paramedics … killed.”
The conflict has dealt a harsh blow to overall healthcare in Lebanon, which was already reeling from a string of dire crises in recent years.