The Sovereign Order of Malta condemns any attack against health care workers and facilities in any conflict or location.

What happened last night in Gaza at the Al-Ahli hospital, causing hundreds of deaths, among them innocent children, is unacceptable.

For decades our commitment has been to support these facilities, including in places of crisis: among them the Holy Land.

These attacks affect above all the defenseless and the most fragile and, besides not respecting international conventions, first and foremost the Geneva Convention, they shatter anyone’s heart and are an offense against human dignity and before God.

Such atrocities are intolerable. They have involved all parties for too long, causing mourning and destruction that from violence only triggers new violence.

The international community must respond by imposing a plan that goes beyond war and about which we have heard ineffectively for too long.

The Order of Malta, which has always assured its help to anyone in need, will continue to do so by standing by the suffering populations with its humanitarian actions, without distinction of religion or ethnicity.

Photo-Credit: EPA/MOHAMMED SABER