Sufferers lie on chilly, blood-stained flooring in overcrowded hospitals. Some scream in ache, however others lie nonetheless, deathly pale, too weak to even scream.
Hospitals within the southern Gaza Strip have fallen into chaos for the reason that resumption of battle between the Palestinian militant group Hamas and Israel.
After eight weeks of battle, interrupted solely by a seven-day break that ended on Friday, the docs are exhausted.
Gasoline provides are operating low on account of Israel’s blockade of the realm, forcing docs to decide on the place and when to run turbines of their hospitals.
In line with the United Nations, no hospital within the north of the area can at the moment function on sufferers.
Essentially the most significantly injured are transferred south daily by convoys organized by the Worldwide Committee of the Pink Cross.
However even there, the UN says, the 12 remaining hospitals are solely “partially practical.”
Abdelkarim Abu Warda and his nine-year-old daughter Huda have simply arrived at Deir al-Balah Hospital on board one of many ICRC convoys.
On Friday, after the ceasefire ended, their dwelling within the sprawling Jabalia refugee camp within the north was hit by an Israeli assault.
Huda was injured within the head. “She had a mind haemorrhage – she was placed on a ventilator,” her father advised AFP.
Since then, “she hasn’t responded to something,” he says, elevating the little lady’s arms.
“She does not reply anymore,” he repeats, sobbing.
– No phrases –
It’s morning and the primary prayers for the lifeless are stated.
A number of dozen males collect in entrance of white physique baggage lined up on the bottom.
Between two bigger baggage lies the small shroud of a kid, near his or her dad and mom, even when they’re lifeless.
Ladies in tears crouch down to the touch a face or kiss a beloved one for the final time earlier than the our bodies are fastidiously loaded into the again of a pickup truck.
“It is Adam who goes… and there is Abdullah,” a lady says, crying.
On the Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, the most important medical facility in southern Gaza, the story is identical.
The pinnacle of the World Well being Group, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, stated on Sunday that he “could not discover phrases sturdy sufficient” to precise his issues about circumstances there.
Members of a WHO group visiting it discovered it full of 1,000 sufferers, thrice its capability.
Sufferers had been handled on the ground “screaming in ache” whereas “numerous individuals… sought shelter and crammed each nook,” the WHO chief wrote.
Israel unleashed its air and floor marketing campaign in response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 assault on southern Israel, which killed about 1,200 individuals and kidnapped some 240, Israeli officers say.
The Hamas authorities that runs Gaza says Israel’s marketing campaign has killed greater than 15,500 individuals, together with 280 medical staff, because it began eight weeks in the past.
– ‘Noticed the bomb drop’ –
Israel, which has vowed to eradicate Hamas, says it’s now concentrating on the southern city of Khan Yunis.
The army drops warning leaflets daily in neighborhoods that will likely be focused, telling residents {that a} “horrible assault is imminent” and ordering them to go away.
Every single day the warnings additionally come nearer to the hospital.
With every new explosion that rocks town there are extra victims, typically in personal automobiles.
The employees rushes out with stretchers, which are sometimes nonetheless stained with blood from the earlier affected person.
Some our bodies arrive unaccompanied and thus can not even be recognized.
Households, injured individuals and medical personnel all jostle collectively within the corridors.
Some maintain the sufferers and slide a sweater or a T-shirt below the top of an injured particular person mendacity on the arduous ground.
Ehab al-Najjar, a person with a number of family members each alive and lifeless within the hospital, lets his anger explode.
“I got here dwelling and noticed the bomb falling on our home. Ladies and youngsters had been dying. What did they do to deserve this?” he shouts.
