The humanitarian plight in Gaza has further deteriorated following the onset of Israel’s offensive in Rafah on the 6th of May. Global indignation has been caused by recent Israeli air onslaughts on a shelter for displaced Palestinians in the northwestern region of Rafah, further taxing medical facilities in central and southern Gaza which were already under immense pressure.
In the aftermath of the attack, the health ministry in Gaza documented 45 deaths and 249 injuries, with the casualties instantly transported to both Tal Al-Sultan clinic and field hospitals run by the Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières, situated along the seaside.
Considering the solely active hospital in Rafah- Kuwait hospital- was unable to operate post the Israeli assaults that led to the casualties of two employees, seriously injured individuals were transferred six kilometres to the north to Al-Aqsa hospital near Deir Al-Balah.
Ezzedine Chahine, the hospital’s anaesthetist, in a conversation with Beirut’s L’Orient-Le Jour, stated that the majority of the victims of the Rafah assault were suffering from acute conditions with burns constituting 50 percent of their bodies. He declared most of them were at risk due to the non- functional state of the only specialist burn unit in Gaza’s semi-operational Al-Shifa hospital. He communicated the near collapse of the health system.
Prior to the Israeli offensive causing the border crossing at Rafah to cease operations, crucial cases were moved out to Egypt and medical provisions entered Gaza alongside international medical teams. “Presently, entry or exit is denied,” commented Chahine, labelling the situation as “catastrophic”.
As per the United Nations, only 16 among the 36 hospitals in Gaza are somewhat functional.
Unrwa, the United Nations’ operational agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, communicated that over a million out of the 1.4 million Palestinians seeking refuge in Rafah had escaped to intensely populated safe zones designated by Israel, which lacked shelter and were undersupplied in food, water and medical assistance. Organisations supervising aid distribution are having to re-arrange and re-route strategies to circumvent the volatile battle grounds.
Silce the main aid route between Rafah and Egypt was shut down, UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports the passage of only 906 trucks loaded with humanitarian assistance into the Gaza Strip. BBC cited the Norwegian Refugee Council saying there were 2,000 aid trucks waiting on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing. As per reports from Reuters, food has already gone bad due to the heat.
According to the United Nations, at least 500 trucks delivering aid and commercial products need to reach Gaza every day. The Rafah crossing is irreplaceable and despite 123 trucks of food and fuel entering via the Kerem Shalom crossing in Israel on Monday, impediments and ongoing conflict have prevented the UN from gathering the aid, as noted by Ocha head, Martin Griffiths, on X. Since May 17, a $320m pier funded by the US and designed for aid delivery, has only managed to offload 137 trucks. The structure had significant issues when four of its barges detached during a storm, washed up near Ashdod in Israel and part of it broke, thus suffering a temporary halt in operations, US officials reported to Reuters anonymously. The timeline for restoring operation remains unclear. Only 214 trucks managed to pass through the Erez west crossing last week with 109 carrying flour and six containing medical supplies. Both the Gaza health ministry and the World Food Programme’s director Cindy McCain on May 4th have issued grave warnings of an impending famine, with McCain stating northern Gaza is experiencing severe famine which is spreading southwards. The health crisis exacerbates with 250 Palestinians killed and 829 injured from May 23rd to 27th, raising the total number of fatalities since October to 36,050 and injuries to 81,000, as per the Gaza health ministry statistics cited by the UN.