General
Emergency Responders Have Stopped Operating in Northern Gaza
People have been forced to dig through rubble in search of their neighbors after the main emergency service in Gaza said it had stopped operations there because of Israeli attacks.
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.
