HUMANITARIAN workers and medical professionals say they have been overwhelmed with daily mass casualties as Israeli forces open fire on Palestinians seeking aid at distribution sites.
Medical officials said many people they are treating have been wounded by Israeli forces as they try to reach distribution sites run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) while others have been injured as huge crowds form around convoys sent into Gaza by the UN.
Around 640 Palestinians have been killed and more than 4500 injured while seeking aid between May 27 and July 2, the Ministry of Health in Gaza said as it warned the health system in the region is close to collapse.
Dr Mohammed Saqr, director of nursing at Gaza’s Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, told the Guardian he had witnessed countless mass casualty incidents in recent weeks.
“The scenes are truly shocking – they resemble the horrors of judgment day. Sometimes within just half an hour we receive over 100 to 150 cases, ranging from severe injuries to deaths,” he said.
“About 95% of these injuries and deaths come from food distribution centres – what are referred to as the ‘American food distribution centres’.”
Saqr added: “Every bed is occupied by a patient, and these additional injuries place an unimaginable burden on us.
“We are forced to treat patients on the floor of the emergency department … Most of these injuries are gunshot wounds to the chest and head … Patients [are] with arriving with amputated legs and arms.”
On Tuesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said doctors in Gaza had seen an unprecedented surge in mass casualty incidents linked to aid distribution sites over the last month.
GHF, which runs the aid sites, were set up by the American and Israeli governments to control the flow of aid into Gaza after disputed claims that the UN-led system was seeing aid stolen by Hamas militants.
The GHF’s executive director, Johnnie Moore, an evangelical preacher and former adviser to Donald Trump, has previously called UN reports that hundreds of Palestinians had been killed trying to collect aid from his group “disinformation”.
Last week, more than 130 leading charities and non-governmental organisations operating in Gaza issued a joint call for an end to the “deadly” GHF aid distribution scheme.
Since the launch of the GHF aid distribution system, the ICRC’s 60-bed field hospital in Rafah, in the south of Gaza, has treated more than 2200 weapon-wounded patients and has registered more than 200 deaths.
“The scale and frequency of these incidents are without precedent. In just over a month, the number of patients treated has surpassed the total seen in all mass casualty events during the entire previous year,” the ICRC said in a statement.
“Among the wounded are toddlers, teenagers, elderly, mothers – and overwhelmingly, young men and boys. Most say they were simply trying to get food or aid for their families.”
An 86-bed field hospital run by UK-Med in al-Mawasi,in southern Gaza, also received many casualties who were seeking aid when they were attacked.
Dr Clare Jeffreys, a British emergency medicine specialist who is working at the hospital, said: “Since I arrived there have been a lot of gunshot injuries. They tell me how they were injured, and say it was at or near food distribution sites.”
