1 of 2 UN says “thousands of patients” will be at risk if fuel runs out Photo: Portal UN says “thousands of patients” will be at risk if fuel runs out Photo: Portal
The United Nations (UN) has warned that “thousands of patients” will be at risk if all hospitals in the Gaza Strip run out of fuel supplies which, among other things, power generators in the coming hours.
Almost half of the injured arriving at hospitals in Gaza are children, some of whom are the only survivors in their families, a doctor told the BBC’s “Today” program.
Ghassan AbuSittah, a surgeon who normally works in the United Kingdom, arrived in Gaza last Monday (September 10) and remained in the northern region, where he worked at a local hospital.
On Sunday, he said two girls, aged four and five, were admitted with burns and head injuries.
“They were the only survivors who were evacuated from the family home. We have cases like this every day,” AbuSittah said, explaining that most people remain in the evacuation zone.
“Becoming a refugee is such an important part of Palestinian identity that people simply don’t want to experience it again,” he said, adding that areas considered safe were bombed with the same ferocity as others.
Khan Younis is on the verge of collapse
In Khan Younis, scarce resources are quickly running out, BBC reporter Rushdi Abu Alouf reports from the city, which is home to thousands of Palestinians fleeing the northern Gaza Strip.
“Khan Younis is a city that was already exhausted. The wave.” [de refugiados] was making a lot of progress and things are starting to break down,” writes Alouf.
The city’s main hospital, already lacking essential supplies, is not only accepting the sick and injured from the north but has also become a refuge, the correspondent reports.
Refugees crowd the hallways as doctors tend to new arrivals injured by Israeli bombs. The noise of many voices speaking at once fills the air.
“You can’t blame people for coming here. Hospitals are among the safest places in times of war and are protected by international law,” says the reporter.
“In some ways, these people might be the lucky ones, at least for now.”
Doctors can do almost nothing to counter the influx of new victims water is rationed to 300 ml per day per patient. Refugees receive nothing.
2 of 2 Photo: BBC Photo: BBC
Gaza’s water is “running out,” Jason Lee of the nongovernmental organization Save the Children told the BBC from Ramallah in the West Bank.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Monday that the 6,000 displaced people at its Rafah logistics base were limited to one liter of water per person per day.
It was also posted on social media that a quarter of a million people had moved into shelters in the last 24 hours most of them in schools where “drinking water has run out.”
The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said the last functioning seawater desalination plant in Gaza was closed on Sunday and some people are resorting to brackish water from agricultural wells.
The main suppliers of drinking water are now private providers who operate small desalination and water treatment plants, powered primarily by solar energy, the organization added.
A Palestinian girl whose family fled their home in Gaza says she “can’t even describe the condition they live in.”
Rahaf, who is now in Khan Younis, said: “There is no drinking water. There isn’t even water to wash our faces. We can’t take this anymore.”
She described seeing blood and bodies in the streets and trying to calm her brothers when they heard explosions, telling them that the sounds were coming from a “wedding ceremony” and that they were “normal.”
She was hoping to have something to eat today after her father waited three hours for bread at a bakery yesterday due to food and water shortages in the region.
Sardines and canned meat
In the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis, Mohammad Ghalayini, a British citizen who lives in Manchester but returned to his hometown in Gaza last month, is seeking shelter from Israeli bombing in a bunker.
Fuel shortages in Gaza prevent civilians from using domestic pumps to access water, he says. Municipal pumps were shut down last week as Israel cut off supplies of fuel, electricity, water and other goods following Hamas attacks.
Drinking water supplies are distributed “very sporadically,” he tells the BBC.
Ghalayini says he has heard from people sheltering in UN schools, of which there are thousands, who have told him that their food rations consist of “a can of sardines and a can of corned beef, no bread… people really have problems.” ” .
14 UN staff killed
A UNRWA spokeswoman said on Monday that 14 UN staff, mostly teachers, had been killed and the number continued to rise as Israeli airstrikes continued almost nonstop.
Juliette Touma says the rest of her 13,000 employees are desperate, exhausted and afraid of what the next few hours and the next day will bring.
They share that they can’t even assure their children that everything will be okay. Supplies are quickly running out and United Nations offices in southern Gaza are left with just one liter of water a day.
Touma is concerned about waterborne diseases as people in Gaza resort to drinking from dirty water sources such as wells.
She also said reports that fuel tankers had entered Gaza were false. UNRWA transferred existing but limited fuel supplies within the Gaza border to health care providers in Gaza City.