GAZA CITY/ISTANBUL

Medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Saturday that the number of injured Palestinians by Israeli fire in Gaza has tripled since late May, as the territory’s shattered health system struggles to cope.

Mohammed Abu Mughaisib, MSF’s deputy medical coordinator in Gaza, said in a video message that food distribution centers set up under an Israeli- and US-backed body known as the Gaza Relief Organization have turned into “areas of death” rather than safe points for civilians.

“What remains of the health sector is only a fragile skeleton, and now it faces a new horror,” he said, warning that many of the wounded never make it to hospitals alive.

According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, nearly 1,924 people have been killed and more than 14,000 injured while waiting for aid at such sites since May 27, when the Israeli-run scheme began.

Abu Mughaisib described scenes of crushed bones, amputated limbs, torn arteries and severe infections, stressing that emergency surgery and intensive care, both already decimated by months of war, are collapsing in the few hospitals still functioning.

He called for an immediate ceasefire and unfettered humanitarian access, saying without them “there will be nothing left to save, neither hospitals, nor patients, nor the future.”

Israel has killed 61,900 Palestinians in Gaza since October 2023. The military campaign has devastated the enclave and brought it to the verge of famine.

Last November, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Israel also faces a genocide case at the International Court of Justice for its war on the enclave.