Washington
The report highlighted an alarming disrespect for the protection of health care in wars by governments and armed groups, which has earned fierce condemnation from human rights groups and doctors.
The study by the Geneva-based WHO, the agency’s most comprehensive study of such attacks around the globe, detailed 594 attacks on hospitals and clinics in the Middle East, Africa and elsewhere in 2014 and 2015, which have left 959 medics, support staff, patients and visitors dead and over 1,500 injured.
Most disturbingly, the report states that over 60 percent of the attacks deliberately targeted medical facilities, while 20 percent were accidental and the rest were undetermined. Over 50 percent of the attacks were perpetrated by governments, one-third by non-state armed groups and the rest were unknown.
“We witness with alarming frequency a lack of respect for the sanctity of health care, for the right to health care and for international humanitarian law,” the report said. “Patients are shot in their hospitals beds, medical personnel are threatened … hospitals are bombed.”
Targeting hospitals, doctors and patients constitutes a war crime, according to the Geneva Conventions. The U.N. Security Council has denounced the attacks and demanded that all parties in conflicts protect medical facilities, but some of the council’s most powerful members have themselves been associated with these crimes.