‘There’s blood everywhere’: WHO official in Gaza

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“There’s blood everywhere in Gaza hospitals,” WHO Medical Team Coordinator Sean Casey said on Tuesday from the Joint Humanitarian Operations Center in Rafah, in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Casey reported ‘significant casualties’ arriving in Al-Aqsa hospital following a reported Israeli attack on Maghazi refugee camp in Central Gaza on Christmas eve. Footage showed injured patients and children lying on the floor in crowded hospitals.

Israeli actions intensified around Christmas, particularly in a central area just south of the seasonal waterway that bisects the Gaza Strip. The Israeli army told civilians to leave the area, though many said there was no safe place left to go.

Since Hamas killed 1 200 people and captured 240 hostages on October 7 in the deadliest day in Israeli history, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has responded with an assault that has laid much of Hamas-ruled Gaza to waste.

Palestinian health authorities said nearly 21 000 people had been killed in Israeli strikes, with thousands more feared buried under rubble. Nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people have been driven from their homes, many several times.

Israel says it is doing what it can to protect civilians and blames Hamas for putting them in harm’s way by operating among them, which Hamas denies.

But even Israel’s closest ally the United States has said it should do more to reduce civilian deaths from what President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate bombing.”