HUMANITARIAN IMPACT:THE GAZA Strip was relatively calm yesterday following Thursday's massive firestorm which destroyed UN and Red Crescent warehouses – filled with food and medical supplies – and the al-Quds hospital in Tel Hawa neighbourhood.
On the phone from al-Awdah surgical and maternity hospital in Jabaliya in the north, Dr Marwan Saliyah said: “For a few hours it has been a little bit quiet. We hope it will continue. People are leaving their homes to look for food and see how relatives are faring.”
Since Israel launched its assault on December 27th, the 75- bed hospital has received 370 emergency cases, 57 of whom were kept in hospital, he said. Severe cases were sent to Gaza City or to Egypt.
At present there are only nine patients in the wards, one in intensive care. The injured suffer from crush and shrapnel wounds and phosphorus burns. “Two hundred babies have been delivered at the hospital since the beginning of the year,” Dr Saliyah said. “The average is 500 a month.”
In Gaza City just south of Jabaliya, Irish volunteer Caoimhe Butterly also reported a lull in the offensive. “Al-Quds hospital had to be evacuated late Thursday of doctors, nurses and patients. Patients were ferried in ambulances to the Red Cross and Shifa hospitals.
“Israeli troops, who had driven deep into Tel Hawa, appeared to be pulling back towards the centre of the Strip.”
Twenty-three bodies were recovered in Tel Hawa, several from the crater left by the strike on the building where Saeed Siyam, Hamas’s interior minister, was killed along with family members.
Nearby buildings were heavily damaged. Ms Butterly is living in an ambulance.
To reassure ration recipients, Irish national John Ging, operations chief of the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), said the agency “is up and running again, setting up new warehouses”.
Jaber Wishah, deputy director of the Palestinian Human Rights Centre, who has taken refuge with a brother at Nuseirat camp at the centre of the Strip, went to the centre’s office in Khan Younis. His wife, an UNRWA doctor, made the rounds of clinics in a white UN car.
He said that on Thursday night Israel struck nearby Bureij camp with a bombardment that released acrid smoke, forcing people as far as 2km (1.2 miles) away to cover their noses and mouths with wet cloths. He too said Israeli troops and tanks had pulled back.
“But Bureij [where his own home is located] is very dangerous. We can only visit during the three-hour lull,” he added.
He and the other 27 members of his family holed up in Nuseirat are fortunate to have a small generator which allows them to have lights and to snatch a look at television and access the internet.
“I bought 40 litres of fuel . . . enough to last for four days. We are adapting our feeding habits to what we find. We are playing around with ways to cook lentils, rice and kidney beans. We try to eat as much food as we can because we are not sure if we will have another meal. It’s a defence mechanism. My elderly father and mother keep requesting ice cream and unseasonable fruits and vegetables,” said Wishah.
Jenny Linnel, a British volunteer based in the southernmost city of Rafah, reported the “continuous bombardment” had eased although there were occasional explosions and the sound of Apache helicopters overhead.
The tunnels used to smuggle essential supplies and weapons are not the main focus of Israel’s heavy bombardment, she said.
“Israel is systematically destroying or damaging thousands of homes between the Egyptian border and the main street of Rafah. UNRWA estimates 50,000 people have been driven from their homes here. Most stay temporarily with relatives.”
She has visited farming villages near Rafah where “50 houses have been demolished and fruit orchards and fields have been bulldozed. Groups of women and children fleeing have been fired upon by Israeli soldiers and at least one woman in her late 40s was shot and could not be rescued before she bled to death.”
According to hospital figures, 48 Palestinians were killed yesterday. The total death toll has reached 1,169, of whom 370 are children and 85 women. The numbers injured are now 5,015.
Thirteen Israelis have died, three of them civilians.