‘Horrific trauma patients’: WHO official gives harrowing account from Gaza
Rik Peeperkorn, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, who is in Gaza, has given some harrowing accounts of what he has seen amid efforts by the WHO to supply hospitals there with essential medical and humanitarian supplies.
“Currently in Gaza, everywhere I go, and I’ve been in Gaza City just a couple of days ago, and here in the south and everywhere, people live between anxiety and hope,” he said, referring to the ongoing talks in Egypt to broker an end to the fighting.
“When we were in Gaza City two days back to al-Ahli Hospital bringing in the most needed trauma supplies – IV fluids, saline, IV antibiotics, also some lab equipment and food for patients and staff etc – bombardments were all over the place where we were,” he said at a media briefing.
“We saw a constant stream of trauma patients, horrific trauma patients, young girls with severe burn wounds, boys gasping,” he said.
Doctors Without Borders official describes Gaza as place where ‘death hovers and strikes anyone’
Claire Magone, executive director of the French branch of medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), has returned from a weeklong visit to the Palestinian enclave, saying: “In Gaza, death is everywhere. It’s not just a feeling, it’s palpable. Death lurks, it hovers, it strikes anywhere, anyone.”
Speaking to French newspaper Le Monde, Magone said she visited MSF teams treating patients as “tanks approached, drones flew over the neighbourhoods, and the water was cut off”.
She told Le Monde: “The army is conducting a strategy of asphyxiation, attacking, for example, water tanker trucks, as it did in mid-September with one of ours, which was clearly identified, and blocking all vital services.”
She added that France had stopped medical evacuations of patients from Gaza since August, and called on the country to “take its share, like the others”.
New documentary captures AFP journalists’ firsthand experiences of Gaza war
A new documentary about AFP journalists trapped in Gaza during the first stage of Israeli attacks on the Strip will be screened at a ceremony for the Bayeux prize for war reporters in France on Thursday.
Independent journalist Helen Lam Trong’s film Inside Gaza will be shown in the presence of six of the seven permanent AFP journalists who covered the conflict’s start, before airing on Arte, a European public service broadcaster, on December 2.
The documentary traces their lives after October 7, 2023. Day after day, the journalists documented the suffering and killing of their own people and their colleagues.
Reporting in Gaza means being surrounded by injured children, dead bodies and victims buried under rubble. With Israel forbidding foreign journalists from entering, Palestinian journalists face these conditions alone – and constant attempts to discredit their work.
AFP journalist Mohammed Abed recalled Western outlets asking him to prove a child had died after pro-Israel groups claimed his photograph showed a doll.
AFP’s seven journalists were evacuated between February and April last year and now reside in Doha, Qatar; Cairo, Egypt; and London, UK, struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.
