According to UN and Red Cross agencies working in Gaza, city residents have no food, water or electricity. The only connection with the outside world – the Rafah checkpoint on the border with Egypt – is closed.
As one of Gaza’s surgeons told reporters, the city’s hospitals “are on the verge of collapse.” They are overcrowded with people seeking asylum and cannot evacuate patients.
“Thousands, if not tens of thousands of people are seeking refuge in the hospital, on the grounds, but also inside buildings, on stairwells, in corridors and even in wards between patient beds… Unless a humanitarian corridor is created to supply hospitals with everything necessary and evacuate the wounded, if the bombing does not stop, then an absolute disaster awaits us here…” said Dr. Ghassan Abu Settah, a member of Doctors Without Borders.
Gaza’s morgues have run out of space and are using vans with freezers that used to deliver ice cream to temporarily store the remains of the dead.
As of Sunday evening, according to the Palestinian Health Authority, 2,726 Palestinians had been killed in the fighting and more than 10,800 were injured.
Among them are 2,670 dead and about 9,600 wounded in the Gaza Strip, 56 dead and more than 1,200 wounded in the West Bank. In addition, more than 1,000 people are missing, buried under the rubble of Israeli bombing.
