“There really is a feeling of total devastation”, testifies Leo Cains, head of mission of Médecins Sans Frontières in the Palestinian territories.
“There really is a sense of utter devastation.”, Léo Cans, head of mission of Médecins sans frontières in the Palestinian Territories, raged on franceinfo on Saturday 20 January. He has been in the south of the Gaza Strip for several days, from where he gives his testimony about the situation.
FRANCEINFO: You are in the south of the Gaza Strip, where the fighting is now concentrated, particularly in the Khan Younes sector. What was your first observation?
Léo Cans: We are now six or seven kilometers from the center of Khan Yunis and six or seven kilometers away, we hear the bombs falling all night so loud, it shakes the windows, shakes the walls. Five days ago when I was in Nasser Hospital (in Khan Yunis), the windows of the operating room were broken while the doctors were operating on a patient. There is a lot of shooting, helicopters. It does not stop day and night.
Are there any buildings still standing in Gaza or has everything been destroyed?
No, obviously, there are still buildings standing, but there are some neighborhoods where the destruction is quite significant. I worked in Raqqa (in Syria) and it reminds me today, with so many destructions of buildings, cars… there really is a sense of total destruction.
But where and how do people live?
People are completely naked. The town of Rafah (border with Egypt) has become a huge refugee camp. There are tents everywhere in the city, on the beach, on the roads, it creates a traffic jam. We can’t even go around anymore! People have very little water, very little food. We see long queues of people filling water containers…
It is extremely difficult for the population. They live in tents. It is very cold now. Temperatures can drop to ten degrees at night in Gaza, they don’t have enough blankets. So there are many children who are sick. Many people have a cough.
Maintaining basic hygiene is very difficult. And people are tired. We saw it. There are many people who are depressed. There is a real despair that falls on many of them, because many come from the north where they lost their homes. Whenever we talk to someone, they tell us that they have lost their house, that it has been destroyed. Houses, to a Gazan, are the same to a Frenchman, they are for life, they are savings for life.
And then there is no future, no future. Everyone is waiting for the war to end. We always wonder when the war will end? And obviously, the situation in the hospitals is catastrophic. I’d even say it’s a nightmare.
Drinking water is a problem. You just told us. And what are the health consequences? Are you afraid of an epidemic? For example, thousands of cases of diarrhea have been reported.
Yes, sure, there are many cases of diarrhea and hepatitis, many skin diseases. The health level of the general population is slowly declining and in the south, the population density in Rafah is so high that diseases spread very quickly. Five days ago, I was at Nasser Hospital and I also went to the European Hospital which are the last two hospitals south of the Gaza Strip that are functioning, the two big hospitals.
And the situation is terrible because there are so many children, so many women who are amputees, so many families who have been struck by lightning. So, often, in the same room, there are many family members who are very seriously injured and always already dead.
I was chatting with a little girl named Miriam at the European Hospital. Her story is very typical as she lost her younger brother, her younger sister in an air raid. She lost her mother and her father is nowhere to be found. This little girl, Miriam, had her right leg amputated, and next to her, was her aunt who also had a big wound on her arm and her leg, and she couldn’t get out of bed.
We had to change Miriam’s dressing, without anesthesia, because she had no anesthesia. And this little girl of six or seven screamed for 30 minutes, time to clean the wound… And finally, it was terrible, because she called her mother, who died. Such scenes are repeated one after another in all European hospital centers like Nasser Hospital.
International aid remains difficult to access. A spokesman for the UN Secretary-General says Israel is blocking the arrival of humanitarian aid shipments. Have you noticed that?
Totally. Just this morning, we mobilized to go to Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City, to bring medicine and see what our teams are there. And we were still blocked at the Gaza City checkpoint. This is systematic in the Israeli army. The Israeli government is blocking humanitarian aid from entering northern Gaza. This is unacceptable.
We have big problems with bringing equipment, for example, we can’t bring generators. So our teams who are there, who work very hard hours, for two weeks, they don’t have electricity, a cold water shower, we don’t have electricity at night, it’s a small solar panel that gives us something to recharge the batteries. is And this is how an NGO is forced to work because the Israeli government refuses to let us import generators.
And it’s the same problem for medical equipment. It is impossible to bring it north of Gaza, where the needs are enormous. This is a population that is completely cut off from the world and is completely prohibited by international law. Essential commodities should be able to reach people. There is no reason why we cannot bring medicine, water or food to this population that is completely surrounded in the north.
