In response to Hamas’s bloody assault on Israeli territory, the IDF heavily shelled Gaza, a poor and narrow landlocked strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea home to 2.3 million people. On the Palestinian side, 765 people have been killed since Saturday, according to local officials. “Drones and warplanes are being used” by the Israelis, explains Alexandre, a French surgeon who has been in Gaza with Médecins Sans Frontières for about ten days.
“No one is safe from the Israeli attacks and intense bombings day and night,” explains Ziyad Medouk, a French professor at the university who is in the center of Gaza City with his five children. There are no underground passages or air raid shelters here. So we decided to stay home, but this attack was more bloody than the previous one. They destroy buildings, mosques, universities, power stations, water wells, kindergartens.
On Monday evening, Zonal Coordinator Najla ShawaNGO Oxfam, had to rush out of his apartment, threatened by explosions. “We had to leave at midnight. Panic spread through the streets and people screamed for help,” says a resident of Gaza’s western suburbs. As six residential buildings threatened to collapse, Najla and her neighbors fled. “We stayed for several hours in a sheltered restaurant, the owner is one of my neighbors. It was very stressful because the bombings continued until the early hours of the morning, but we still managed to sleep for an hour,” he says. Alexandre confirms that the bombings “intensify at night.” .
Displaced residents
This Tuesday, Najla returns to her neighborhood. The buildings are still standing, with “concrete blocks, the remains of broken glass and windows” piled on the ground. “I was very lucky. It’s minor damage, but we’ve been cleaning all day and this mother of two is breathing. I am very worried and the situation is hopeless. I can’t describe the sense of panic we were experiencing and unfortunately expected to experience a similar night again. “The city center was heavily bombed last night, it was very intense,” tells us Asia Gilani, a French teacher who, with her three boys, has moved accommodation several times since the bombing began. We saw flames and clouds of dust in the sky. This morning we received the order to leave the building: the streets were completely cleared.
The Israeli response has displaced more than 260,000 people inside the Gaza Strip since Saturday, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. About 1,800 residents were displaced and housed in schools run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) on Tuesday. “Most of them come from the eastern districts of the city,” says Najla. But not everyone can be transferred. “On Monday evening, I saw a family vacate their bomb-hit building. There is no safe place for them to go,” says Alexandre.
Video. “We’re afraid of everything”: In Gaza, two Palestinians describe their daily lives under the bombs
Air strikes on hospitals
“People are under pressure,” confirms the MSF rescuer. The bombings continue. Here, we have the feeling that nothing is saved, no one is safe. » Its operation is divided between Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, and Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. Unfortunately, since Saturday, the movements of MSF teams have been hampered by incessant airstrikes, which are extremely dangerous.
“Health structures have been damaged. On Monday morning, an MSF health clinic received an 11-year-old child with burns all over his body. The explosion happened near his house, the video shows. This morning, the victim had to close the building due to strikes that damaged the building,” laments the rescuer, who laments the fact that maintenance structures are “very difficult to access for those in need”. “We were still able to produce emergency supplies for hospitals: resuscitation care consumables, surgery, antibiotics,” explains the rescuer.
All expatriate humanitarian workers gathered at the United Nations base in Gaza City, anticipating the possibility of an exit if a humanitarian corridor was established. “It is no longer possible to work in defense, it is time to send teams back and mobilize an emergency team, which, when conditions allow, can provide aid to health structures that request it, explains Alexandre. Health centers rely on generators, electricity is scarce. Everyone is frustrated, medical consumables are running out. We start going.
Israel announced the evacuation of the border areas, imposed a “total blockade” on the Gaza Strip and ordered the “immediate cutoff” of water supplies to the Palestinian territories, after the water supply was cut off. Electricity and food, land intervention also seems to be taking shape. “They cut off water supply and electricity. No more material or humanitarian aid. The borders are completely sealed,” breathes Najla Shawa.
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