Buzzing sound of drones above Gaza City sows panic among Palestinians
There are at least five drones in the air above Gaza City right now, and they have been there since the early hours of this morning. This buzzing sound is grinding down people’s mental health and causing so much panic as well as trauma among people here.
There has not only been an attack on al-Ahli Hospital, where four journalists were killed, but other attacks took place near al-Shifa Hospital, and five people were reported killed.
Another attack took place near a famous bakery in Gaza City’s centre, and two people were reported severely injured and died as soon as they reached hospital.
Earlier attacks also targeted evacuation tents in al-Mawasi. This area has been the site of relentless attacks despite having been designated a safe zone.
A man carries a girl as Palestinians evacuate the wounded from the site of an Israeli air strike in Gaza City
‘I saw a man in pieces… the lower half of his body was gone’
At least 3 Palestinians have been killed, including children and women, in an Israeli strike on al-Nasser Street, near the al-Shifa Hospital compound west of Gaza City. Resident Fadi al-Hindi was sitting in his tent when the attack occurred and told Al Jazeera that he immediately ran outside to check on his children.
“When I arrived, I saw a man in pieces; he had been riding a bicycle, and the lower half of his body was gone. Everyone in the street was injured, and we started to collect the pieces of the wounded. All the people here were injured, and most of them are martyrs because it was a huge missile,” he said.
“Every day when I walk down the street, I’m afraid I’ll be targeted next to them and die,” al-Hindi stated.
Another resident, Naaman al-Kafarna, told Al Jazeera the densely populated area was very crowded when the attack occurred. “There were many martyrs. Everyone who was in that place was either injured or torn apart,” al-Kafarna said.
Civilians respond to injured and dead Palestinians following an Israeli attack on Nasser Street, Gaza City
‘I was amputating limbs with blunt tools, with no anaesthetics’
Rossel Morhij, a UK-based plastic and reconstructive surgeon who has volunteered in Gaza twice, tells Al Jazeera about her most recent visit when, as she was finishing a shift at Nasser Hospital, a school sheltering people nearby was bombed.
“I went to the ED [emergency department] to try and help, but it was something I’ve never seen, and the images will stay with me forever,” she said.
“One of the patients was an eight-year-old child who lost 19 members of his family. His name was marked with a permanent marker over his chest because he was identified by the only surviving neighbour there,” she recalled.
“He lost his cousins, his dad, his sisters and brothers. His mum was alive, but she was unconscious with severe brain damage in the ICU,” Morhij said, adding that she did not know how to tell the boy he had also lost a limb.
“When I went for the first time, it was four months into the war, and people were already starving, malnourished, with no equipment. I was amputating limbs with blunt tools, with no anaesthetics, only ketamine, where the patient is subconsciously still awake,” she said.
UN chief says one in 50 UNRWA staff in Gaza have been killed
Guterres has said that more than one in every 50 UNRWA staff members in Gaza have been killed during the war, a figure that he said constituted the “highest staff death toll in United Nations history”.
Meanwhile, Guterres told reporters that geopolitical divisions have kept the UN Security Council “paralysed” to the frustration of supporters of international law.
“Unfortunately, today in the world, we have impunity everywhere,” he said, when asked whether Israel enjoys impunity for abuses in Gaza. “Unfortunately, we have not only humanitarians and journalists killed, but we have civilians killed in dramatic situations and there is total impunity.”
