Gaza’s hospitals may not be able to function before the end of the week, with no electricity, water or even gasoline to operate the generators, according to Doctors Without Borders (MSF).
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“Hospitals believe they will run out of resources in two days. “We are very worried about water, but also about medicines and medical equipment, which are running out very quickly,” said Claire Ha-Duong, deputy program manager for MSF in Palestine.
Since the Hamas attack in Israel last Saturday, the Israeli government’s reprisals have become more violent than ever, says Ms. Ha-Duong, who is in constant contact with her teams based in Gaza.
“It’s outrageous, everyone tells us these are the most violent moments of their lives,” she adds.
“The bombings happen all the time, it’s a deluge. It’s impossible to move,” she continues.
AFP
The situation is more than critical, with more than 2.2 million people in the Gaza Strip stuck in a landlocked area under constant bombardment, added François Audet, director of the Canadian Observatory on Crises and Humanitarian Action.
“If a humanitarian ceasefire does not come quickly, we will be witnesses and accomplices to a massacre to destroy Hamas,” he warns.
Médecins Sans Frontières has reopened one of its clinics in recent days to help the population of Gaza as hospitals are overwhelmed.
“We have few patients because people are too afraid to come out of hiding and would rather stay with their family [plutôt] than risk being killed,” she says, adding that the windows and doors of the Médecins Sans Frontières house where the foreign workers live were destroyed by a bomb in recent days.
Horrible images
On Telegram, an encrypted instant messaging service, you can see specific images of what is happening in Gaza, often viewed as an “open-air prison,” through numerous communication channels.
But with no power and no internet for three days, it is becoming increasingly difficult for civilians to share images of what they see as the batteries of cell phones and other communications die.
“Be careful, bombings are taking place in the north of Gaza, but no journalist has the strength to name the exact locations,” warns a user of a group with more than 40,000 subscribers.
AFP
The videos and photos shared in these groups show real chaos: frightened children covered in dust looking for a place to hide while the sound of bombs can be heard, hospitals full of children, bloody babies and sometimes their corpses, or even very special graveyards a territory devastated by bombs.
Towards the catastrophe
And the situation may not calm down for a long time, fears Ms. Ha-Duong.
“They talk [du gouvernement israélien] It was very violent, so unfortunately we don’t expect it to calm down. It scares us. If this continues, it will be a catastrophe,” she prepares.
François Audet agrees.
“As a country, Israel must avoid a massacre and respect international humanitarian law. “The international community must ensure that a ceasefire is negotiated,” he explains, adding that the Israeli government has warned since Wednesday that hospitals are no longer protected areas in which the population can hide.