The severely destroyed Al shifa hospital in Gaza city, Palestine, February 2025. Image credit: Nour Alsaqqa/MSF
Abed Qusini is a former Reuters journalist from Nablus, Palestine. Here he describes the appalling conditions amid urgent calls for humanitarian aid for the region.
In a statement Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) has said it: “…is horrified by Israel’s renewed military bombardment on Gaza, which has collapsed the fragile ceasefire and killed at least 413 Palestinians overnight, including many children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The true toll is likely higher, with many still trapped beneath the rubble of destroyed buildings.”
“This return to Israel’s atrocities in Gaza comes two months after a temporary ceasefire was reached. Now, Israel has directly collapsed this fragile ceasefire in the most deadly fashion, plunging Palestinians back into an unrelenting assault.”
“Gaza’s health system, which has been systematically destroyed by the Israeli military since October 2023, lacks essential supplies and cannot provide adequate care to the many hundreds of injured people.”
Fikr Shalltoot, MAP’s Gaza Director, said: “For a brief moment, Palestinians in Gaza could breathe, mourn, and return to what remained of their homes. Now, they are being forced to relive the horror all over again. The scale of killing and destruction overnight is beyond comprehension. Hospitals are overwhelmed, medical supplies are rapidly running out, and people are once again being displaced with nowhere safe to go. The world must not stand by as Palestinians endure Israel’s atrocities once again.”
Abed Qusini reports from the ground.
More than 500 Palestinians have been killed and 900 injured by Israeli bombing in several areas including shelters that were pronounced as ‘safe’ inside the exhausted Gaza strip, according to Khalil Daqran, spokesman of the Palestinian Ministry of Health pointing out that 70% of the injuries were women and children and most of them critically injured.
Marwan al-Hamss, Head of Field Hospitals at the Ministry of Health, said that the ministry has entered a phase of depleting its medical supplies and equipment, while the Israeli occupation has used new weapons after resuming its war of extermination on the Gaza Strip. Al-Hams explained that the tight blockade imposed on the medical sector for more than eighteen days has pushed stores to the point of depletion, especially in light of the dozens of injuries arriving daily. He pointed out that the depletion process affects all medical supplies and equipment, in addition to a significant depletion of beds, particularly intensive care beds.
“Those with serious injuries are doomed to die due to lack of resources” he emphasized warning that the arrival of dozens of injuries simultaneously poses a major challenge to medical teams and leads to a number of deaths. In this context, al-Hams confirmed that all injuries arriving at hospitals suffer from 100% complete burns, in addition to a significant increase in the number of amputations. He explained that this is evidence of the use of new weapons, with which the occupation has increased the intensity of its aggression compared to previous weapons, especially in the case of burns, which have now reached 100%.
Al-Hamss affirms that since the resumption of the war, hospitals have been receiving hundreds of wounded around the clock, the majority of whom are women and children, amid weak capabilities, a lack of medical supplies, and a scarcity of intensive care rooms, which number no more than four in all hospitals in Gaza City and the northern Gaza Strip.
In a statement the Ministry of Health held the Israeli occupation fully responsible for these brutal crimes, calling on the United Nations, the World Health Organization, the Red Cross, and international human rights organizations to take swift action and pressure the occupation to open the crossings and secure humanitarian corridors for the transfer of the wounded and the entry of medical aid.
Australian medic Mohammed Mustafa said that the situation is catastrophic in the hospitals of Gaza, where legs are being amputated without anesthesia.
“The smell of burnt flesh is still in my nose” Mustafa describes the aftermath of Wednesday night’s attacks at Baptist Hospital in Gaza City. “We’ve run out of ketamine, propofol, all painkillers. We can’t sedate, can’t give analgesia. We intubate, and people wake up choking, no sedation. Seven girls are getting their legs amputated without anesthesia.” Israeli bombings began early morning, and have not stopped for hours.
Journalist Mohammed Abo Mostafa reported seven cases of amputations without anesthesia. A similar account was put forward by Australian medic Muhammad Mustafa on the first day of the return of Israeli attacks continuation concerning several girls he saw undergoing the same process.
The International Red Cross warned Wednesday that many medical facilities in Gaza are suffering from “extreme pressure” beyond their capacity following the recent Israeli strikes, while the World Health Organization (WHO) confirmed a shortage of medicines in the enclave.
Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) colleagues were reporting that “many medical facilities are literally overwhelmed across Gaza”, Tommaso Della Longa, spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said.
Della Longa said medical facilities were struggling with the large numbers of patients and with the pressure on dwindling medical supplies.
“There are shortages of food, supplies and fuel,” he said, noting that PRCS teams were assessing the impact of fuel shortages on ambulances and getting first responders to those in need.
Longa added that there is a shortage of medical equipment and medicines in hospitals and clinics, which makes it even more difficult to provide the necessary treatment to save lives.
Meanwhile, WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic warned that medicine stocks were becoming depleted.
“Unfortunately, because of this shortage of medicines, there is a risk of health workers not being able to provide treatment for different medical conditions, not only for trauma injuries,” he said.
He added that many supplies are now running out, affirming that WHO had sixteen trucks with medical supplies ready to enter Gaza, for which ceasefire and access were needed.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) reported that its teams received a large influx of wounded at its field hospital, clinic, and Nasser Hospital.
“The types of injuries are extremely severe, ranging from amputations to complex orthopedic cases and burns,” said Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, the organization’s deputy medical coordinator in southern Gaza.
He added that hospitals are unable to cope with the large number of casualties they are receiving at once.
Also the head of MSF’s emergency department, Claire Nicolet, who is currently in Gaza, said it was absolutely terrifying for twenty minutes, with bombs falling everywhere.
The Palestinian Ministry of Health has urgently called on the international community to intervene and protect patients, medical staff, and healthcare centers in Palestine, particularly in the Gaza Strip, amidst the ongoing Israeli military offensive.
The Ministry called the international community to bring aid, medicine and food to hospitals and medical centers in the Gaza Strip.
The ministry said in a press statement that the occupation bombardment continues around the clock in the whole areas of the strip. It pointed out that the hospitals are in dire need of the necessary maintenance supplies to maintain the continued provision of electricity, water and oxygen, in light of a severe shortage of medicines, anesthesia and painkillers.
It pointed out that Israel is violating the most basic rules of international law and international humanitarian law by targeting medical and health centers, and not allowing those inside to be rescued and saved.
Early on Tuesday Israel resumed its war on the Hamas-run Gaza strip killing hundreds in a series of massive airstrikes against what it described as Hamas targets all across the enclave
The strikes came exactly after two months of the fragile ceasefire deal for Gaza hostage release.
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Palestinian lives in Gaza continue to be at critical risk from illness, starvation, and a lack of access to healthcare due to the Israeli military’s systematic dismantling of Gaza’s health system. Meanwhile, Israeli military attacks continue in the occupied West Bank. With your help, MAP can provide vital supplies, medicines and humanitarian aid to the occupied Palestinian territory and Lebanon.
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