Tuesday, 5 August 2014
Dead Gaza children kept in ice cream freezers
gaza's morgues are overflowing to such an extent that medics are being
forced to pack babies' bodies into ice cream freezers, shocking pictures
have revealed.
A wounded boy cries under the rubble of the house in Rafah which was destroyed in an airstrike
The United Nations has warned that Gaza's medical facilities are 'on the verge of collapse' with buildings left in ruins and half of medics unable to get to work. Palestinians say corpses now litter the streets and casualties fill the blood-stained emergency room floors of Gaza's hospitals, a third of which have been damaged in the fighting.
Some children's bodies from the al-Ghol family, which lost nine members, were crammed into a freezer because there was no room for them in the morgue of Rafah.Two-fifths of Gaza's medics are now unable to get to work because of the violence and treatment is thrown into chaos by anonymous false alarms of impending attacks. Many of those in shelters are reliant on bottled water as the total amount of British aid pledged to the crisis reaches £13million. Sanitation facilities are badly damaged and Gaza City only receives two hours of electricity per day, the UN added. Some areas have no electricity at all and one shelter in Jabalia is holding 10,000 people.
Dr. Ambrogio Manenti, acting Head of Office of the UN World Health Organization, said: 'The ability to provide necessary healthcare is being severely compromised. This puts the lives of thousands of Palestinians in needless danger'. Violence abated slightly after Israel declared a seven-hour humanitarian ceasefire and withdrew troops from parts of Hamas-ruled Gaza but tensions continued to simmer in the 28-day conflict that has killed nearly 1,900 people.
Israeli strikes on Gaza killed 11 people, including an Islamic Jihad commander, raising the Palestinian death toll to over 1,820, according to Gaza health officials.
In Jerusalem, an Israeli was killed and five injured when a Palestinian rammed an earthmover into a bus, turning it over before the driver was shot dead by police. Later, an Israeli soldier was shot and seriously wounded near a bus stop not far from the site of the earlier attack, with police combing the area for his attacker who fled.
The attack on the bus was a "terrorist attack," and the driver was a Palestinian from east Jerusalem, police claimed.
