Never seen mass casualty event like al-Mawasi: MSF doctor
Mohammed Abu Mughaiseeb, deputy medical coordinator for the charity Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) says the scale human suffering in the aftermath of the Israeli strike on al-Mawasi was unlike anything he had ever witnesses.
“I have never seen a mass casualty event like [Saturday],” he said on X as from Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. “Every corner in the hospital was busy. Every space was occupied by the injured or bodies of the dead.”
Amy Kit-Mei Low, MSF project and medical referent, said that “at one point, you had people in the hallway moaning in pain.” “Even though they had [wound] dressings, the dressings were oozing blood. […] the hospital was trying to cope, but it can barely cope with normal cases,” she added.
The organisation said on X that the “disproportionate attack on a place where Israeli forces have repeatedly advised displaced people to go… show[s] a complete disregard for the lives of Palestinians.”
‘They told me I would be safe here’: UNRWA chief quotes al-Mawasi survivor
Philippe Lazzarini, head of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), quoted a Palestinian mother who lost her eight-year-old child and had another one injured in Israel’s attack on al-Mawasi, near Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip.
The mother told UNRWA that she thought she would be safe in al-Mawasi, an area the Israeli army had previously designated as a “humanitarian safe zone”. The strike on the camp killed at least 90 people.
“Yesterday’s attack and the mass casualties are a stark reminder that no one is safe in Gaza, wherever they are”, Lazzarini wrote on X.
“They told me I was going to be safe here” said to @UNRWA a mother who lost her 8-year-old child & has another one injured in the strike on Al-Mawasi.
As we have repeatedly said there is no “safe” or “humanitarian” zone in #Gaza
These “designations” were misleading and… https://t.co/eplrLVbJSf
— Philippe Lazzarini (@UNLazzarini) July 14, 2024
UNRWA says more than 190 facilities destroyed in Gaza
The director of the UNRWA media office in Gaza, Enas Hamdan, has told Al Jazeera that more than 190 of its facilities have been destroyed in Gaza, despite the UN agency sharing its coordinates regularly with the Israeli army.
“Our facilities are mainly used to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people,” Hamdan said. “Unfortunately, there is no safe place in the Gaza Strip.”
The comments come after Israeli forces bombed an UNRWA school in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, killing at least 17 displaced people sheltering there.
Ahead of Paris Olympics, Palestinians recount dead, wounded athletes
As Palestinians gear up for the Paris Games, beginning on July 26, Olympic committee head Jibril al-Rajoub says that 400 athletes, coaches and sporting officials in Gaza have been killed or wounded since the start of the war on October 7.
Majed Abu Marahil, a long-distance runner who was the first Palestinian to compete in an Olympics in Atlanta in 1996, died in June. According to officials, he suffered kidney failure and could not get treatment as Gaza’s hospitals have been destroyed by Israeli bombardment.
Soccer player Ahmad Abu al-Atta and his family were killed in their home by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, the Palestinian Football Association said in June. Abu al-Atta who played as a defender for the team Al-Ahly Gaza, died along with his wife Ruba Abu al-Atta, a medical professional, and their two children after the air strike hit their home in Gaza City.
Also in June, international referee Hani Mesmeh died after sustaining wounds from an Israeli air strike in the Gaza Strip a month earlier.
