GENEVA: All health facilities in southern Gaza have been pushed to “breaking point” due to an influx of people wounded by Israeli bombardments and doctors could soon be forced to make “difficult choices” on who gets treated, the Red Cross said Thursday.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said its 60-bed field hospital in the city of Rafah took in 26 people requiring hospitalisation for shrapnel and other injuries after a strike on the Al Mawasi camp for displaced people on Saturday.
The health ministry in the Hamas-run territory said at least 90 people were killed and 300 injured in the strike that Israel said targeted military commanders behind the October 7 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
“The repeated mass casualty events resulting from the unrelenting hostilities have stretched to breaking point the response capacity of our hospital – and all health facilities in southern Gaza – to care for those with life-threatening injuries,” William Schomburg, Gaza head of the ICRC delegation, said in a statement.
“Another mass casualty event would force our doctors and nurses to make extremely difficult choices,” he said, citing limited supplies for treatment and repeated hospital closings during the conflict.
Last week also saw an influx of 850 people requiring outpatient care at the Red Cross hospital, “nearly half of whom are women and a third are children”, the Red Cross said.
“Most of the patients have been displaced from their homes multiple times and are living with little food and clean water, in overcrowded areas, making it easier for them to fall sick,” the statement said.
Since May it said the hospital had carried out more than 500 surgeries and 12,000 consultations.
The war broke out after Hamas’s unprecedented October 7 attack on Israel that resulted in the deaths of 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has devastated the narrow coastal territory and killed at least 38,794 people, also mostly civilians, according to figures from Gaza’s health ministry.
US declares end to troubled Gaza aid pier mission
Meanwhile, the US military’s problem-plagued mission to deliver desperately needed aid to Gaza via a temporary pier has ended, a senior American officer said Wednesday.
US President Joe Biden has expressed disappointment in the performance of the pier, which has repeatedly been detached from the shore because of bad weather since its initial installation in mid-May, limiting the time it has been operational.
“The maritime surge mission involving the pier is complete, so there’s no more need to use the pier,” Vice Admiral Brad Cooper told journalists.
The pier was damaged by bad weather in May and had to be removed for repairs. It was then reattached on June 7, but was moved to Ashdod on June 14 to protect it from anticipated high seas – a situation that was repeated later in the month.
Distribution of aid once it reaches land has also been a problem, with the UN World Food Programme suspending deliveries of assistance that arrived via the pier last month to assess the security situation after Israel conducted a military operation nearby.
Biden announced the pier project during his State of the Union address in March as Israel held up deliveries of assistance by land, and the Pentagon has said it helped push the Israeli government to open more aid routes.
“The deployment of this pier has… helped secure Israeli commitment to opening additional crossings into northern Gaza,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told journalists last week.
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