GENEVA, October 31. /TASS/. Hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip are overcrowded with people who have nowhere to go, forced to seek refuge in medical establishments where medics are working non-stop in appalling conditions, Alyona Sinenko of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) told TASS.
"We have around 130 employees in Gaza. Access to a number of settlements is impeded due to ongoing fighting. Our brigades on the ground have recently visited hospitals in northern areas," she said. "The needs are overwhelming: personnel are overburdened with work while stocks of medical supplies are nearly exhausted."
"These hospitals are overfilled with people seeking security. They sleep in stairwells because thousands of people have nowhere to go and they are seeking refuge in hospitals," she said, adding that ICRC employees "felt walls reverberating from explosions." Medical brigades "have been working non-stop for days in appalling conditions, not seeing their families and even not knowing whether they are alive or not."
According to Sinenko, most of the hospitals in Gaza are not functioning as they should. They need electricity. "Fuel is running out and this is affecting the operation of additional generators. Hospitals are in dire straits," she stressed.
"Four out of five wastewater treatment facilities have been shut down while the fifth is operating at its lowest capacity," she went on to say. "This means that wastewater is released directly into the sea." Moreover, seawater desalination facilities are not operable due to the lack of fuel and scarcity of electricity, making water harder to access.
The ICRC warns about the risk of infectious diseases spreading such as cholera and dysentery.
Tensions flared up in the Middle East after Hamas militants from the Gaza Strip attacked Israeli territory, killing many Israelis living in the settlements near the border and abducting more than 200 people, including children, women and the elderly. Hamas views its attack as a response to Israeli authorities’ steps against the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Israel declared a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and launched bombardments of the enclave and some areas in Lebanon and Syria. Clashes are also reported in the West Bank.