DUBAI, December 18. /TASS/. Israel is seeking to ruin the healthcare system in the Gaza Strip as it continues to attack medical facilities there, spokesman for the Palestinian Health Ministry Ashraf al-Qedra said.

According to him, the Israeli army is targeting Nasser Hospital in the southern Palestinian enclave after it stormed al-Shifa medical facility in Gaza’s north. "Delivering strikes at Nasser Medical Complex is part of occupation policies with a view to liquidating healthcare facilities which would destroy the healthcare system in southern Gaza," Qatar’s Al Jazeera television quoted him as saying.

A child was killed and three more people were injured in an Israeli attack that hit the maternity ward at the hospital on Saturday night, the TV said.

The World Health Organization (WHO) earlier reported an unprecedented number of detentions of healthcare workers as well as attacks on hospitals and ambulances in the Palestinian enclave. Since the latest escalation began between Palestine and Israel, WHO has documents 203 such attacks as it described the situation at healthcare facilities in Gaza as catastrophic.

Tensions flared up again in the Middle East on October 7 after militants from the Gaza Strip-based radical Palestinian group Hamas launched a surprise incursion on Israeli territory, killing many Israeli kibbutz residents living near the Gaza border and abducting more than 200 Israelis, including women, children and the elderly. Hamas described its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ aggressive actions against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel declared a total siege of Gaza and started carrying out strikes on the Palestinian enclave, as well as on certain areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also taking place in the West Bank.