Content warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of violence.
In the early hours of March 18, Israeli forces attacked multiple areas in the Gaza Strip, after almost two months of an already-fragile ceasefire. Hundreds of people have been killed, according to the Ministry of Health.
At Nasser Hospital, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) received 55 dead and 113 injured patients. In Deir al-Balah, the MSF field hospital received 10 injured patients, and Al-Aqsa Hospital received 20 dead and 68 injured patients in the emergency department.
At MSF’s Attar clinic in Al-Mawasi, southern Gaza, our team received 26 injured patients, including three in critical condition, who were later referred to Nasser Hospital. The clinic was also struck with shrapnel. MSF teams were unharmed.
Three of our staff were able to send us voice notes while responding to the influx of patients. Below are their testimonies.
“Everyone was praying”
The emergency in Nasser Hospital was very disastrous: We received many bodies and body parts, most of them children and women.
The bodies were everywhere in the emergency room, with complete confusion. Some of the citizens rushed to get treatment and other families rushed to the emergency room for protection.
Each of us had two concerns: to triage the cases and help those in need quickly, and the other was to be [sure] that families are OK and safe.
Most of us have returned to our home areas after a long displacement. At that moment, everyone was praying to God that none of their relatives would be present among the dead and the injured.
The situation was very tense, and the doctors in the emergency room fell down and collapsed. They were crying due to the intensity and the difficulty of the situation.
There were some serious cases, including third degree burns on the face, amputations, and wounds to the head and chest.
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Read more“Hospitals are not able to cope”
We woke up at 2 a.m. to very heavy airstrikes. I mean, the Rafah-Mawasi area was really shaking. The ground was shaking.
It reminded us of the beginning of the war, the type of airstrikes, which were very heavy. And we started contacting our teams who are working in our facility in Nasser Hospital.
In total, the Ministry of Health announced that there were more than 400 casualties during the night, during the airstrikes, in the whole Gaza Strip. The hospitals are not able to cope with the situation regarding the mass casualties that they received at once in all the hospitals from north to south.
“We were awakened by the sounds of heavy bombing”
This morning at 2 a.m. we were awakened by the sounds of heavy bombing. It was absolutely terrifying for 20 minutes with bombs all over the place and when we started looking at what is the situation, we understood that [there was a] massive attack with airstrikes, heavy artillery, quadcopters was on the whole Gaza Strip. After 20 minutes we continued to hear all night long some heavy bombing, airstrikes, and artillery, in Rafah, in Khan Younis—in almost all parts of Gaza all night long.
As soon as it started, we heard the sounds of ambulances because obviously there was a huge number of patients—wounded, dead. It's of course very complicated [during] such an attack for patients to receive care in a timely manner.
Hospitals were very overwhelmed, and at the moment it's quite difficult because patients cannot really move, they don't know if it's safe, and even our teams don't know if we can move around the Gaza Strip because, there is no longer a notification system to be sure that we will be safe when moving.
Now it means as well that the teams in the north and the south are again split. It means as well that people cannot move freely from one place to another, and in reality, there is very poor access to health care, and very poor access to shelter as everything has been destroyed.
There are a lot of needs but also a lot of uncertainty about what's next. So it's very scary for people and they are very afraid of the current situation. Of course, they saw that this is a full restart of the fighting and they are very scared of what's next.
Unfortunately, we also understood that the medical evacuations have stopped for now. There had normally been a few patients every day who left [for treatment] outside of Rafah. This will not happen today, and we don't know how it will continue.
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MSF calls for ceasefire
MSF continues to call for a sustained ceasefire in Gaza. People simply cannot afford for such violence and devastation to start again. Israel must end its collective punishment of the population. Aid and basic goods must be allowed into Gaza.
