The testimonies were obtained by the charity, Christian Aid.

 

I have been working here for 25 years and I have never seen anything like this before. I have never seen this number of injuries or such severe injuries among civilians, children two and three years old.

We absolutely do not have the capacity to treat the numbers of patients we are receiving. That is why the minute the border opens with Egypt, we try to send the most difficult cases through for treatment and keep the less difficult cases here.

We are asking for the help of all physicians across the world - what type of weapons cause these injuries and how do you deal with them?

It is a disaster here. Entire families are suffering having had their houses collapse on top of them, some of them have been shelled, others are burned, it really is a disaster.

We have been receiving a very high number of patients with a strange burn, completely different to the burns we are used to managing, very deep burns with a very offensive, chemical odour coming from the wound site.

The wound keeps smoking for a long time. When we try to wash it with saline and water, some reaction happens, the skin bubbles and the patient complains of extreme pain.

In some cases there is then severe destruction of the tissue and we have had to amputate whole limbs.

We don't know what type of treatment should be used. The major problem is we don't know the kind of weapon that has been used.

We have a visiting doctor from Norway who thinks it might be white phosphorus but we are not sure. Even if it is, we have no experience of it and do not know how to deal with wounds it has caused.

We are asking for the help of all physicians across the world - what type of weapons cause these injuries and how do you deal with them? Is the chemical odour coming from the wound harmful to the medics?

What are the long term repercussions? We have no idea. What can we say? We try to reassure patients but we do not know.

I haven't slept a minute for the past 36 hours. I am not an administrator, I do not know how long we can continue to treat people in these conditions.

I would work forever with even the bare minimum of supplies. I will work as long as the shelling continues because I have to.

 

It's hard for me to tell one day from another. From the early hours until night we receive a stream of calls from injured people trapped in Gaza who we aren't able to help.

We are an Israeli organisation working to tackle medical rights violations. We haven't been allowed to enter Gaza at all so are constantly calling the Israeli army authorities to let them know about injured civilians, to try to coordinate rescues.

We have managed to get five people with head injuries out of Gaza to Israel for medical care, but that was before the ground offensive began.

Since then, we have been limited to organising for ambulances to reach injured people and trapped families - we have many appeals for help but few successes.

This is by far the worst I have seen it. I could never have thought such a thing could happen so quickly, such a steep descent in such a short time Dr Miri Weingarten

The few hospitals still functioning in the Gaza Strip are stretched to breaking point. There is no room in the intensive care units and there are not enough expert surgical teams able to treat complex injuries.

There is an overflow of wounded people, not being treated in time. Palliative cases have simply been sent home.

So for people with kidney disease who need dialysis twice a week, while most aren't able to reach a hospital for treatment, those that can are sent straight home again.

I heard from the father of one of our patients, a 10-year-old boy with cancer who had been going to Israel for chemotherapy. Of course, there is no chance of that now. His child was in pain, so he wanted to go to the nearest hospital in Gaza, which was the European hospital in Khan Younis.

The ambulance couldn't reach them because the road was blocked so this man carried his son for 8km (five miles) on his back to the hospital.

When they got there, there wasn't any medication available, there weren't even any painkillers so he just carried him back home.

The crisis is not only for hospitals or those who are injured but ordinary civilians trapped in their homes. They may have had some containers of food and water put by and so managed to survive, more or less, for the past few weeks.

But now the food has run out, the water has run out, the batteries of the mobile phones have run out and there is no way of recharging them. There is a growing sense of panic within the civilian population.

The Israeli army has stepped up its military offensive in Gaza. The BBC's Rushdi Abou Alouf is in Gaza City, and he gave us this account while his house was temporarily surrounded by Israeli tanks.

 

 

Last night at about 10 o'clock Gaza time, tanks and Israeli armoured personnel started to move into a very high populated neighbourhood called Tel al-Hawa, south-west of Gaza City.

The tanks are surrounding the place right now and there is heavy fighting ongoing between fighters and Israeli army.

We have seen fighters from our balcony, running and firing rockets.

The tanks are firing back into a residential area where thousands of families are living.

People are suffering, people are screaming from their balconies, calling for help. They are calling for someone to evacuate them.

I'm inside a tower with about five or six families. We are stuck inside the building, the tanks are outside.

Two or three Israeli tank shells have hit the building, but no-one here has been hurt.

It's been 14 hours now since this building had electricity. There is no electricity in the neighbourhood.

There was some hope here when Hamas said that they had accepted the Egyptian initiative.

But then they said they had not accepted the initiative yet, and tanks started to move.

Where we are here, it's so far away from initiatives and diplomacy.

Outside people are starving, they need this war to be stopped, they are calling on someone to intervene and stop this war.
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طبيب فرنسي: شاهدت مناظر مروعة بمستشفى خان يونس     جريح فلسطيني مصاب بجروح خطيرة يتلقى العلاج بمستشفى في خان يونس (الفرنسية)   رسم طبيب  فرنسي صورة قاتمة جدا للوضع الإنساني في جنوب قطاع غزة حيث يحاول مع فريق طبي أجنبي منذ أيام تقديم المساعدة لضحايا العدوان الإسرائيلي وسط ظروف صعبة بسبب نقص التجهيزات الضرورية والقصف الإسرائيلي المستمر بلا انقطاع.   ونقلت يومية فرانس سوار الفرنسية عن الطبيب ريجيس كاريغ العضو بمنظمة "دكتورز هيلب" (doctors help) والذي يقود فريقا مؤلفا من جراح وطبيبين للحالات المستعجلة, أنه شاهد في مستشفى ناصر في خان يونس مناظر مروعة جدا لجرحى فلسطينيين أصيبوا في قصف بالصواريخ أو بالقذائف المدفعية. وقال في مقابلة بالهاتف إنه رأى أجسادا مشوهة وقد بدت عليها جراح عميقة.   وأضاف أن الناس كانوا يصرخون بينما المصابون يُمددون أرضا  في أروقة المستشفى لعدم توفر أسرة, مضيفا أن سكان غزة مجوعون ومروعون. وتابع الطبيب الفرنسي أن المستشفيين الموجودين في خان يونس لا يتسعان لآلاف الجرحى والمرضى ومعظمهم يحتاج لعلاج فوري.   وأضاف أن هناك أطباء مصريين إلا أنه لا توجد تجهيزات طبية خاصة التي تستخدم في التخدير والإنعاش. ونقلت عنه الصحيفة قوله أيضا إن أطباء فلسطينيين أكدوا له قبول عدد من الجرحى المصابين بحروق ناجمة على الأرجح عن قنابل الفوسفور الأبيض التي قصفت بها آلة الحرب الإسرائيلية أغلب مناطق القطاع.   ونقل عنهم الطبيب الفرنسي تأكيدهم أيضا قبول مصابين تعرضوا لغازات تسبب قصورا في الجهاز التنفسي وتؤدي أحيانا للموت أو الشلل. وتحدث كاريغ للصحيفة عن تعرض وفد منظمته لقصف إسرائيلي مثلما حصل مع طواقم طبية كثيرة. وقد استشهد منذ بدء العدوان ما لا يقل عن 13 مسعفا فلسطينيا. حملة من جهة أخرى تتعرض منظمات خيرية بفرنسا لحملة بسبب جمعها تبرعات وتحويلها إلى مصر لمساعدة ضحايا الاعتداءات الإسرائيلية الشاملة على قطاع غزة. وتزعم الجهات التي تشن الحملة أن الأموال تحول لحركة المقاومة الإسلامية (حماس). وأدرجت الولايات المتحدة الأميركية وإسرائيل بعض هذه المنظمات -على غرار اللجنة الخيرية لمناصرة فلسطين التي أسسها طالبان فلسطينيان مطلع التسعينيات- على لائحة ما يوصف بالمنظمات الإرهابية.   وفي خطاب له سنة 2003 ذكر الرئيس الأميركي المنصرف جورج بوش بالاسم هذه المنظمة تحديدا, وقال إنها تنشط داخل فرنسا. ونفى المتحدث باسمها يوسف بن دربال في تصريح نشرته أسبوعية لكسبرس الفرنسية, المزاعم التي تروج بأن المنظمة تمد حماس بأموال التبرعات التي يقدمها مسلمو فرنسا.

المصدر: الصحافة الفرنسية

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