Doctors in the Gaza Strip are donating their own blood to save their patients after scores of Palestinians were gunned down while trying to get food aid, the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said yesterday.
Around 100 MSF staff protested outside the UN headquarters in Geneva against an aid distribution system in Gaza run by an Israeli-backed private company, which has led to chaotic scenes of mass carnage.
“People need the basics of life...they also need it in dignity,” MSF Switzerland’s director general, Stephen Cornish, told Reuters at the protest.
“If you’re fearing for your life, running with packages being mowed down, this is just something that is completely beyond everything we’ve ever seen,” he said. “These attacks have killed dozens...They were left to bleed out on the ground.”
Cornish said staff at one of the hospitals where MSF operates had to give blood as most Palestinians are now too poorly nourished to donate.
“I was shot at 3.10am. As we were trapped, I bled constantly until 5am,” Palestinian Mohammad Daghmeh said in a statement taken by MSF. Daghmeh was one of many wounded while waiting at the GHF distribution hub in Rafah, which Israeli forces have essentially rendered uninhabitable.
“There were many other men with me. One of them tried to get me out. He was shot in the head and died on my chest,” Daghmeh said. “We had gone there for nothing but food – just to survive, like everyone else.”
The mass casualty attacks have led to doctors and barely functioning hospitals getting quickly overwhelmed by patients. MSF said its teams at Nasser Hospital are receiving waves of wounded, while a 60-bed Red Cross field hospital said it received 184 patients on Tuesday. Most of the patients are men likely trying to bring food back to their families, they said.
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