While the Hamas Ministry of Health announced a final toll of 8,306 deaths, including 3,457 children, in the Gaza Strip since the start of the war with Israel, this small landlocked territory is “in a long-term perspective that is crucial,” worries Jean-François Corty , the vice president of this NGO, on RTL radio.
“A mass grave in the open air”
The Israeli army is constantly bombarding Gaza in retaliation for the October 7 attack on its territory by fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement that killed more than 1,400 people, most of them burning alive civilians who were massacred by bullets or died as a result of mutilation. Since October 9, this small, overpopulated area has also been under a “complete siege,” depriving its 2.4 million residents of water, food and electricity. International aid is pouring in.
When MDM, which has around twenty employees on site, “condemns” the “atrocities”. […] Jean-Pierre was outraged by Hamas’s “unspeakable crimes” on October 7, “we must also condemn the fact that today we are dying of thirst, we are starving, we are bombing people who have no prospect of leaving an area of 300 km2 “. François Corty. “We are moving from an open-air prison to an open-air mass grave. There are thousands of civilian deaths, hundreds of aid workers who have nothing to do with terrorists who are dying under the bombs,” he said.
Flashlight operations
In hospitals deprived of medicines due to the blockade, doctors treat “as best they can, on the floor, without painkillers, without anesthetics, they perform cesarean sections without anesthesia, amputations of children without anesthesia,” the vice president of the NGO hospital explained. Without electricity and with generators “almost no longer running” due to a lack of fuel, operations are often carried out “with a flashlight when you can still charge your phone,” he added.
Due to the lack of drinking water, “people are drinking sea water, the people in my team have diarrhea, their children will be dehydrated in a few days,” emphasized Jean-François Corty, who warns of “exponential mortality” among children in Gaza ” in the coming days” due to the bombings, but also “all of these underlying diseases that we can no longer treat.”