The roads are so ravaged that the dead and wounded arrive by donkey cart. Desperate relatives rush bloodied and dust-covered people, many of them children, to the hospital.
Naseem Hassan, a 48-year-old Palestinian medic in the Gaza Strip’s southern town of Khan Younis, said it had become impossible to walk through Nasser Hospital, with people spread out everywhere. Some patients groaned, slept and died on those blood-stained floors, he said. His skeletal staff at the 350-bed hospital has struggled to cope with an influx of over 1,000 patients. Without fresh bandages and gauze, doctors without borders said, patients’ wounds have become seriously infected, in many cases septic.
On December 7, United Nations monitors said the hospital received its first delivery of supplies since November 29. The World Health Organisation delivered trauma and emergency care supplies to the area for about 4,500 patients. “The suffering is really apocalyptic,” said Khaled Abu Shaban, 38, an aid worker near Khan Younis. Israel’s intensive shelling has forced agonising choices, he said. Should he venture out to the supermarket or search for well water, at risk of being killed? Or should he let his young daughters go to sleep hungry and thirsty?
“There are 8,000 people in this shelter, and any vegetables disappear before I see them because people seize everything so fast,” said Mazen Junaid, a father of six who fled to the central city of Deir al-Balah from northern Gaza. The swelling crowds, he said, make it difficult to breathe and move.
Chaotic scenes of sickness and filth unfold at the UN shelters in Rafah, bursting at the seams. The UN humanitarian office said Wednesday that poor sanitation has led to rampant cases of scabies, lice and diarrhoea, raising fears that more serious diseases may soon spread.