ISRAELI AIR STRIKE HITS STARVING GAZANS IN FOOD QUEUE
▶ Twenty dead and more than 150 injured in ‘massacre of the hungry’
At least 20 people were killed and 150 wounded by an Israeli air strike while queuing for food aid in northern Gaza, in what health officials called “a massacre against hungry people”.
The strike hit Palestinians as they waited for supplies at the Kuwait roundabout in Gaza city, the Gaza Ministry of Health said on Thursday.
The death toll is expected to rise, said officials, as dozens of seriously wounded people were being treated at Al Shifa Hospital on Thursday night.
The ministry described the attack as “a new massacre against thousands of hungry people”.
Aid agencies have warned of the dire shortage of food in the beleaguered enclave.
“The food situation in the north is absolutely horrific. There’s almost no food available and everybody we talk to begs for food,” said Sean Casey, a World Health Organisation co-ordinator in Gaza.
“We saw a lot of very thin people just sitting around and staring into space,” said Nick Maynard, a British surgeon who worked in central Gaza in December and early January with the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians. “There was very clear evidence of people who were now malnourished.”
A UN-backed report in December said the population of Gaza faced crisis levels of hunger and a growing risk of famine.
The UN children’s agency projects that over the coming weeks more than 10,000 children will be at risk from “wasting” – which is defined as a loss of at least 10 per cent of body weight, with accompanying conditions such as diarrhoea.
This is among the most serious results of malnutrition, which can stunt physical growth and brain development.
Humanitarian teams and medical workers are operating under near-impossible conditions, as Israeli air strikes continue to pound the enclave and ground forces intensify their assault.
Israeli soldiers reportedly detained women and children in the Palestine Red Crescent Society’s headquarters in the southern city of Khan Younis on Thursday.
Troops “stormed a residential building west of Khan Younis city, arrested all the men inside, took the women and children to the headquarters of the Red Crescent Society, and detained them inside”, sources told Palestinian news agency Wafa.
The Red Crescent headquarters are adjacent to the organisation’s Al Amal Hospital, which has been under “complete curfew” since midday on Wednesday.
The Israeli army “prohibits the movement of humanitarian teams, including ambulances, in blatant disregard for established norms”, the Red Crescent said earlier in the week.
Residents and medical staff said ambulances are unable to evacuate the dead and injured from the streets of Khan Younis because of drone and sniper attacks.
Palestinians have been ordered by the Israeli army to leave areas of Khan Younis and move to the coastal area of Al Mawasi, which the military describes as a “safe zone.”
Many of the estimated 1.9 million Gazans who have been displaced from their homes have sought shelter in hospitals and medical centres, but the sector has now almost completely collapsed.
A humanitarian centre in Abu Dhabi is offering a lifeline to survivors of the war in Gaza.
About 1,000 Palestinians, including children, have found respite at Emirates Humanitarian City.
Providing shelter, food, counselling, education and other services, the centre has become a sanctuary for those whose lives have been drastically altered by the war in Gaza.
The National spoke to Palestinians staying at the EHC.
Their stories are heartbreaking and distressing but illustrate the harsh realities of the war that Palestinians in Gaza are enduring.
Mohamed Elmadhoun, 18, has a prosthetic limb where his leg used to be.
He was fleeing from his grandfather’s house in Gaza and heading to a safer area when Israeli air strikes hit.
His mother was killed and Mohamed was wounded.
At the hospital doctors inserted steel rods in his leg, only to amputate weeks later.
“There was no sterilisation or anaesthesia. My dressings were rarely changed and the pain was unbearable,” Mohamed recalls.
He arrived in the UAE on December 8 with his father and sister, who were also wounded.
Lama Mady, 11, and her mother Sabreen Mady, 45, survived an air strike that killed 45 people in one building.
More than 20 members of Ms Mady’s extended family were killed, including another daughter whose body has not been found.
Lama, her youngest, survived because she was at the bottom of the building at the time, playing with her cousin. But her pelvis was fractured.
“We were at home preparing for lunch when, suddenly, I felt myself flying in the air and landing on the street,” the mother of six said.
The family was on the second floor of the two-storey building. All those on the upper floors were killed. Lama is in the sixth year and longs to go back to school.
“I remember being alone and calling out for my father. I couldn’t feel my legs and there were so many bodies around me,” she said.
The Health Ministry in Gaza estimates that more than 25,700 people have been killed since October 7, with up to 70 per cent of them women and children.
One-year-old Rakan Saif stood up for the first time recently with his grandmother Manal Abdulla, 46, by his side.
He was able to stand thanks to a prosthetic leg installed at the EHC. Rakan also lost a leg and hearing after a bomb hit the building where he was with his family.
He was pulled from under the rubble with his leg detached from the rest of his body.
Despite all those horrific setbacks, he remains a happy child, much to the delight of his grandmother.
Ms Abdulla recalls the moment the bomb hit, forever changing their lives.
“There wasn’t a bang or any noise,” she says.
“I was told that I was thrown out of the third floor and my eldest daughter, who was sitting next to me at the time, had died, along with three of our neighbours.
Her daughter was still alive but bled to death on a hospital floor, Ms Abdulla said. Her injuries were so severe doctors said there was no point in even trying to save her life.
Ms Abdulla said coming to the Emirates felt like she had been given a new lease on life.
“Our doctors [in Gaza] are overwhelmed. They have worse cases than a baby who lost his entire leg,” she said.
The impact of what is happening in Gaza cannot be overstated, said Laila Ibrahim, 50, another survivor.
“In Gaza, you either die on a hospital floor or in your house. You are dead either way. Nowhere is safe,” she said.
“I ran from a bomb that hit the supermarket I was in before realising that I was holding on to the amputated hand of my 13-year-old son.
“I hadn’t let go of Malak’s hand and just screamed to him to quickly run with me in case another bomb lands on us.
“I just ran outside and I remember wondering why it felt so light and why it felt like something was hitting against my thigh.”
That turned out to be her son’s arm.
“I looked back and found Malak in the distance reciting his Tashahhud [a prayer said before one dies],” she said.
Malak lived and was fitted with a prosthetic arm at the EHC last week. He remembers little of that day and has had problems with his memory since the air strike.
Tahany El Refe, 37, has brain, blood and thyroid cancer but refuses to be anything but upbeat, hoping to inspire others to have a positive outlook towards life.
When she goes to her chemotherapy sessions, she says she is going for a stroll in the park.
And when she takes her chemotherapy tablets, she tells everyone that they are sweets.
She tells The National that Gaza will be beautiful again.
Mohamed Ahmed, 10, is on dialysis because of kidney failure. He lost his mother and most of his family in the war.
“I don’t want to go back. What do I go back to? There is nothing called Gaza any more,” he said.
Mubarak Al Qahtani, a spokesman for the EHC, told The National a tight-knit community had emerged among the survivors living there.
“They are not just guests. They are like family to us,” he said. “Our goal is to make this place feel as much like home as possible, despite the circumstances.”
With a capacity to accommodate 10,000, EHC is very much a small city in every sense.
It has a football field, children’s outdoor and indoor play areas, a clinic and even its own mosque.
There are 6,500 rooms, as well as large canteens and restaurants open throughout the day.
There is also a nursery for babies and young children under five, and adult classrooms for older pupils.
There are so far about 1,000 Palestinians living at the EHC, Mr Al Qahtani said, with more expected to join them.