The World Health Organisation (WHO) has insisted that moving the most vulnerable patients from Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital has become an “impossible task”, AFP reports.

The Israeli mission in Geneva had at the weekend slammed the WHO, the UN humanitarian agency OCHA and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) for criticising Israel’s month-long call for civilians and patients to leave the Palestinian enclave’s main hospital.

“The international community could have facilitated the transfer of patients, but they did nothing, except call out Israel and give Hamas a free pass,” the mission said.

But the WHO said moving the most fragile patients would inevitably lead to deaths.

“The reason we said that people can’t be evacuated is first of all […] the people in the hospitals were very vulnerable, very sick. So moving them was an impossible task,” WHO spokeswoman Margaret Harris told journalists in Geneva.

She said it would be “asking doctors and nurses to move people knowing that that would kill them”.

“And again, why would you need to move them? A hospital should never be under attack. A hospital is a place a safe haven. This is agreed under international humanitarian law.”