In Gaza, doctors are “operating in the field” and performing caesarean sections or “amputating children without anesthesia” due to a lack of medicine, the organization Médecins du Monde (Doctors of the World – MDM) condemned on Monday, which fears an “exponential” increase in child mortality in a very short time. AFP reports.

While the Hamas health ministry put the final death toll at 8,306, including 3,457 children, in Gaza since the start of the war with Israel, the small territory “is in a critical long-term situation,” says Jean-Francois Corti. vice president of the NGO, on the RTL radio station.

The Israeli military has been constantly bombing Gaza in response to an October 7 attack on its territory by fighters from the Palestinian Islamist movement, which left more than 1,400 people, mostly civilians, shot, burned alive or maimed.

“We went from prison to mass grave under the open sky”

The small and overcrowded territory has also been under “total siege” since October 9, depriving its 2.4 million residents of water, food and electricity. International aid is arriving very slowly.

While the MDM, which has around twenty staff on the ground, “condemns” the “unspeakable atrocities” committed by Hamas on October 7, “we must also condemn the fact that today people are starving and bombarded with no prospect of leaving an area of ​​300 “. km2,” Korti said.

“We have gone from an open-air prison to an open-air mass grave. “Thousands of dead civilians, hundreds of humanitarian workers who have nothing to do with terrorists are dying under the bombs,” he added.

In hospitals where medicine does not work due to the blockade, doctors treat patients “as best they can, on the floor, without painkillers, without anesthetics. They perform cesarean sections without anesthesia, amputate children without anesthesia,” said the vice-president of the NGO.

With no electricity and with generators “virtually not working” due to a lack of fuel, operations are often conducted “with a flashlight when you can still charge your phone,” he added.

Due to the lack of drinking water, “people are drinking sea water, my team has diarrhea and in a few days their children will be dehydrated,” insisted Jean-Francois Corti, who warned of “exponential mortality” among children in Gaza “in the coming days.” because of the bombing, but also because of “all the major diseases that we can no longer treat.”

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