Israeli road closures in the West Bank on July 27, 2026, badly delayed an ambulance transporting a pregnant Palestinian woman in critical condition, with dire consequences, Human Rights Watch said today. The woman’s fetus did not survive an emergency delivery, and her life was further endangered when soldiers forced the ambulance crew to turn off their medical equipment for at least 20 minutes.

From January to June, the World Health Organization documented 50 cases of delays in medical care to Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli forces imposed even more extensive closures at checkpoints and roadblocks in the Nablus governorate following a settler attack on July 24 that led to the killings of two Israelis, including a soldier, and four Palestinians, and “significantly impeded” access to health care, including by delaying ambulances, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported.

“Israeli forces in the West Bank are not only failing to ensure Palestinians’ access to emergency care but also delaying ambulances from taking patients to hospitals,” said Bill Van Esveld, associate children’s rights director at Human Rights Watch. “Israel is forcing long detours or waits for patients with medical emergencies with appalling regularity, as the precious minutes needed to save their lives tick by.”

Bashar al-Qaryuti, a paramedic, and Sabreen Atallah, a nurse and midwife, told Human Rights Watch that at around 6:30 a.m. on July 27 they took a woman who was six months pregnant from the village of Qaryut. She was prematurely in active labor, bleeding heavily, and drifting in and out of consciousness. With the woman’s husband, they carried her to al-Qaryuti’s ambulance, placed her on oxygen and set out for Rafidia Hospital in Nablus.