Gaza’s Crippled Hospitals Receive New Wave Of Wounded

At Nasser Hospital in Southern Gaza, a man cradling a boy with a bloodied scalp cried for help.

Another boy with a gash on his cheek and tears in his eyes lay under a blanket. A third, his face covered in blood, waited for treatment.

Within hours of the lapse of a week-old truce between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas which runs Gaza, the enclave’s Health Ministry reported that 54 people had already been killed in Israeli air strikes.

Reuters footage from Nasser Hospital, the second largest in the Gaza strip, showed a steady stream of wounded being brought in as other people wept outside beside bodies of loved ones killed in strikes.

Aid groups and the United Nations say a small fraction of health facilities in the devastated enclave are still functioning and those are in no shape to handle a new wave of casualties.

“Hospitals across Gaza lack the basic supplies, staff and fuel to deliver primary health care at the scale needed, let alone safely treat urgent cases,” U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said.

Palestinian health authorities that the U.N. deems credible say more than 15,000 Gazans have been confirmed killed and thousands more are missing and feared buried under rubble. The U.N. says as many as 80% of the population may have been driven from their homes.

REUTERS