Medics and rights groups have called for the immediate opening of a humanitarian corridor from Gaza to allow the urgent evacuation of patients to hospitals in east Jerusalem, AFP reports.

Amid mounting casualties from the war, the East Jerusalem Hospitals Network and Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) called for the immediate reopening of the Gaza to east Jerusalem medical corridor, estimating that about 25,000 patients in Gaza were in need of urgent care.

Fadi Atrash, the director of the Augusta Victoria Hospital in east Jerusalem, said the reopening of the evacuation corridor “is essential to allow us to continue to provide vital treatments in hospitals in east Jerusalem, where we have both the space and the medical expertise”.

Prior to the conflict, patients in Gaza who were in need of medical care unavailable in the Palestinian territory could be evacuated to hospitals in the Israel-annexed east Jerusalem or the occupied West Bank, and in some cases in Israel.

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