When an Israeli airstrike hit a home in northern Gaza early Thursday, residents said, there were no paramedics or first responders around to help pull out people trapped in the rubble.
Instead, Mazen Ahmed, who has been displaced to Beit Lahia, where the strike hit, along with other neighbors near the building, had to dig through the debris to find the casualties themselves. They found at least one body.
“We went out to try and rescue on our own to the extent of our abilities,” he said, speaking by voice message from a cemetery where those killed in the latest Israeli airstrikes were being buried. “There were no stretchers, there were no rescuers, there were no emergency responders.”
More than two weeks ago, Gaza’s civil defense, the main emergency service in the territory, said it was forced to cease its rescue operations in the north because of attacks by the Israeli military on its members and destruction of its equipment.
Scores of Palestinians have been killed in the last month, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, since Israel stepped up military operations in northern Gaza and ordered widespread evacuations, saying it was trying to eliminate a regrouped Hamas presence there.
On Thursday, the Israeli military in a statement said it was operating against what it called terrorist infrastructure in Beit Lahia, an agricultural and residential area on the Israeli border where the Israeli military has been fighting for the last four weeks. It did not comment on reports that it had struck a home in Beit Lahia.
People in northern Gaza must now carry out rescue efforts themselves, digging neighbors out from under the rubble and rushing victims to one of the last functioning hospital in North Gaza in private vehicles or on the back of donkey carts.
“We civilians brought planks of wood, doors and shelves, and we would put the injured on them and every four or six people would take them to the hospital,” Mr. Ahmed said.
At least one person they pulled from the rubble was dead and they managed to rescue six others and take them to the hospital, he said.
UNRWA, the main U.N. agency that aids Palestinians, on Friday described the grim situation in northern Gaza.
“There are reports that injured individuals are being transported, when possible, by animal carts or carried on foot, which results in delays in medical care and an increase in fatalities,” said Louise Wateridge, an UNRWA spokeswoman.
Last week, a joint statement signed by the heads of 15 United Nations agencies — including UNICEF, the World Food Program and the World Health Organization — called on Israel to stop its “assault on Gaza and on the humanitarians trying to help.”
On the situation in northern Gaza, it went on to say, “Rescue teams have been deliberately attacked and thwarted in their attempts to pull people buried under the rubble of their homes.”
The Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the claim that it is deliberately targeting first responders.
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