“Those who survived the bombing are now at imminent risk of death from hunger and disease”: Save the Children and other international NGOs warn of an “apocalyptic” situation in the Gaza Strip after sixty days of Israeli siege, AFP reports.

“Hundreds of children are queuing for one toilet”, “worms in wounds”, “children are being amputated without anesthesia”: “we have no words to describe the horrors that are happening in Gaza”, said Alexandra Sayeh from Salvati, outraged Children.

“Children and families are wandering the streets without food, nowhere to go and nothing to survive,” she continued.

Israel has imposed a total siege on the Palestinian territory since October 9, two days after an attack by Hamas special forces killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in Israel and took about 240 others hostage.

In response, Israel bombed the Palestinian territories and launched a ground offensive on October 27, which culminated in a week-long truce in late November that saw the release of 105 hostages.

But hostilities have since resumed. According to the Hamas government, more than 17,000 people died, 70% of whom were women and minors.

There is no safe place”

“There is no safe place in Gaza,” says Shaina Lowe of the Norwegian Refugee Council. More than half of the homes there have been damaged or destroyed, and 1.9 million residents out of a total of 2.4 million have been displaced by the war, according to the United Nations.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians left the devastated north of the small territory to seek refuge in the south. But there, too, Israeli military action is intensifying.

“Israel is forcing families to move from one dangerous area to another,” insisted Lowe during the same video conference, whose colleagues, like thousands of other Gazans, are “sleeping on the streets with their newborns” for lack of safe shelter.

“Hospitals in Gaza are turning into morgues”

In Khan Younes, in the southern Gaza Strip, a Médecins du Monde staff member “was wounded when a tank attacked a school” where he had taken refuge, said Sandrine Simon, the NGO’s health director.

“Hospitals in Gaza are turning into morgues,” she continued, describing the wounded lying on the floor and exhausted staff.

Al-Aqsa hospital in central Gaza, where Doctors Without Borders works, “receives between 150 and 200 wounded in the war every day,” but on Wednesday “they had more dead than wounded,” sighed Isabelle Defourny, president of MSF France.

And at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes, more than 5,000 wounded and 1,400 dead have been treated by MSF since October 7, meaning “20 percent of the patients who arrived were already dead,” she says, condemning the “massacre without recognition” by Israeli forces .

Hunger, disease and “violation of dignity” – the situation in Gaza is “apocalyptic”

The situation in Gaza is “apocalyptic”, Oxfam’s Bushra Khalidi said, condemning Israel’s restrictions on humanitarian convoys entering the narrow strip of land through the Rafah terminal on the border with Egypt.

In late November, the World Food Program warned of a “high risk of starvation” for Gazans, especially “women and children.”

At the same time, the head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, listed X diseases that affect the territory due to “overpopulation, lack of water, sanitation and elementary hygiene”: more than 100,000 residents suffer from acute respiratory problems. , 75,000 diarrhea, other scabies…

Chiara Saccardi of Action Against Hunger condemned the “violations of dignity” caused by the lack of hygiene, citing, for example, women whose dresses were stained with blood during menstruation.

The Israeli military called for “support” from international humanitarian organizations to “help build infrastructure” in al-Mawas, a coastal area in the southern Gaza Strip between Khan Younes and Rafah, where Israel is asking civilians to leave.

However, Handicap International considers the request “unacceptable” and will not “respond to this request”.

“There are no services, no schools, no health care facilities in this area,” and “the humanitarian community is expected to build everything,” she complains.