Latest news with #AmandeBazerolle
Middle East Eye
09-07-2025
- Health
- Middle East Eye
Mortality for Gaza babies under five rises tenfold amid war: MSF
The mortality rate among Palestinian children under five in Gaza has risen tenfold since the onset of Israel's war on Gaza in October 2023, a survey by the NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has revealed. The retrospective survey of 2,523 MSF staff and their family members in Gaza also showed that the mortality rate for babies under a month old was six times higher compared with Palestinian Ministry of Health estimates before the outbreak of the war. "The children of Gaza are being decimated," Amande Bazerolle, deputy manager of MSF's emergency department, said.
Shafaq News
09-07-2025
- Health
- Shafaq News
MSF report reveals tenfold rise in child mortality in Gaza
Shafaq News – Gaza A mortality survey by Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF–Doctors Without Borders) has documented a sharp increase in child deaths in Gaza, as the Israeli war enters its 642nd day. Tracking 2,523 MSF staff and their families between October 2023 and March 2025, the study found that 2% had been killed and 7% injured during the conflict. Among those killed by blast injuries, nearly half were children—and 40% of them were under ten. The report also documented a tenfold increase in mortality among children under five, and a sixfold rise in infant deaths during the first month of life. 'This disregard for children's lives clearly indicates that this war run by Israel in Gaza is against all Palestinians,' said Amande Bazerolle, MSF's deputy emergency manager. 'The children of Gaza are being decimated. Israel's allies must put all their efforts to end the genocide taking place before our very eyes.' The report's release coincides with ongoing Israeli airstrikes across the enclave. According to Gaza's Health Ministry, 105 Palestinians were killed and 530 wounded in the past 24 hours, with the total toll since October 7, 2023, now standing at 57,680 killed, most of them women and children, and 137,409 injured.
USA Today
05-05-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
Gaza a 'mass grave' of Palestinians, says MSF, as Israeli strikes kill 13
Gaza a 'mass grave' of Palestinians, says MSF, as Israeli strikes kill 13 CAIRO, April 16 (Reuters) - Gaza has become a "mass grave" for Palestinians and those trying to help them, medical charity MSF said on Wednesday, as medics said the Israeli military killed at least 13 in the north of the enclave and continued to demolish homes in Rafah in the south. Palestinian medics said an airstrike killed 10 people, including the well-known writer and photographer, Fatema Hassouna, whose work has captured the struggles faced by her community in Gaza City through the war. A strike on another house further north killed three, they said. There was no comment from the Israeli military. In Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, residents said the Israeli military demolished more homes in the city, which has all come under Israeli control in the past days in what Israeli leaders said was an expansion of security zones in Gaza to put more pressure on Hamas to release remaining hostages. "Gaza has been turned into a mass grave of Palestinians and those coming to their assistance. We are witnessing in real time the destruction and forced displacement of the entire population in Gaza," Amande Bazerolle, Medecins Sans Frontieres' emergency coordinator in Gaza, said in a statement. "With nowhere safe for Palestinians or those trying to help them, the humanitarian response is severely struggling under the weight of insecurity and critical supply shortages, leaving people with few, if any, options for accessing care." More: Israeli missiles strike Gaza hospital, patients evacuated Efforts by mediators Egypt, Qatar and the United States to restore the defunct ceasefire in Gaza and free Israeli hostages have faltered with Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas locked in their positions. Hamas says it wants to move into the second phase of the January ceasefire agreement that would discuss Israel's pullout from Gaza and ending the war, which erupted when Hamas militants stormed Israel on October 7, 2023. Israel says war can only end when Hamas is defeated. ESSENTIAL SUPPLIES The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said Israel's suspension of the entry of fuel, medical, and food supplies since early March had begun to obstruct the work of the few remaining working hospitals, with medical supplies drying up. "Hundreds of patients and wounded individuals are deprived of essential medications, and their suffering is worsening due to the closure of border crossings," the ministry said. Israel said the punitive measures were designed to keep up pressure on Hamas, while the Islamist faction condemned it as "collective punishment." Since restarting its military offensive in March, after two months of relative calm, Israeli forces have killed more than 1,600 Palestinians, Gaza health authorities have said. The campaign has displaced hundreds of thousands of people and imposed a blockade on all supplies entering the enclave. More: 'Enough wars': Hundreds of Palestinians in Gaza protest against Hamas Meanwhile, 59 Israeli hostages remain in the hands of the militants. Israel believes 24 of them are alive. The war was triggered by Hamas' October 2023 attack on southern Israel, in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage to Gaza, according to Israeli tallies. Since then, at least 51,000 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli offensive, according to local health authorities. (Reporting and writing by Nidal al-MughrabiEditing by Ros Russell)
Al Jazeera
18-04-2025
- Health
- Al Jazeera
Children in Gaza survive on ‘less than a meal a day': Aid groups
Israel's total siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip have left Palestinian children surviving on less than one meal a day, according to an urgent warning by the leaders of 12 major aid groups in the enclave. The humanitarian aid system in Gaza 'is facing total collapse' due to 18 months of Israel's military operation and the recent imposition of a full blockade last month, the joint statement said on Thursday. An estimated 95 percent of the 43 international and Palestinian aid groups have already suspended or cut their services in Gaza, amid 'widespread and indiscriminate bombing making it extremely dangerous to move around', it added. 'Kids are eating less than a meal a day and struggling to find their next meal,' said Bushra Khalil, policy head of the aid group Oxfam. 'Everyone is purely eating canned food … Malnutrition and pockets of famine are definitely occurring in Gaza.' Amande Bazerolle, emergency coordinator in Gaza for Doctors Without Borders, added that aid workers have been forced to watch people, many of them women and children, suffer and die while carrying 'the impossible burden of providing relief with depleted supplies'. 'This is not a humanitarian failure – it is a political choice, and a deliberate assault on a people's ability to survive, carried out with impunity,' she said. In Gaza City, Al Jazeera's Hani Mahmoud reported on Friday that the enclave was running out of baby formula, leaving children and infants malnourished. 'We have seen many severe malnutrition cases. Families are not able to provide for their most basic needs, even for the most vulnerable – children and newborn babies. Baby formula is largely missing from the markets and pharmacies,' Mahmoud said. 'Gaza is quickly running out of all necessities.' Outside Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, Palestinians told Al Jazeera they are losing their children to malnutrition. Fadi Ahmed, who lost his son, said hospital staff discovered 'massive infections in the boy's lungs, which led to a severe lack of oxygen in his blood'. 'The boy's weakness and severe malnutrition led to his inability to resist and then to his death … after spending one week at the hospital.' Intisar Hamdan, a grandmother, said she lost her grandson because his parents could not find any milk for three days. 'Children are suffering from not just malnutrition, but also serious medical complications and diseases that cannot be easily treated and require medical supplies that are scarce,' Al Jazeera's Tareq Abu Azzoum reported. According to Gaza's Health Ministry, at least 60,000 children are considered malnourished in the Palestinian territory. The aid groups said Gaza holds the record of being 'the deadliest place on earth for humanitarian workers', making it even more difficult to deliver services to children. Since October 2023, more than 400 aid workers and 1,300 health workers have been killed in Gaza, despite the requirement under international humanitarian law for humanitarian and health workers to be protected. 'The recent killing of 15 Palestinian paramedics and rescue workers, whose bodies were found buried in a mass grave, triggered global outrage, but many violations and attacks go unreported,' it added. The aid groups are calling on Israel and the Palestinian armed group to guarantee the safety of their staff and to allow the safe, 'unfettered access of aid into and across Gaza', and for world leaders to oppose further aid restrictions.
Yahoo
17-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Israeli strikes kill Palestinians in tented area for displaced in Gaza
At least 37 people have been killed in a series of Israeli strikes, most in areas where displaced civilians have set up tents, Gaza's Hamas-run civil defence agency says. Witnesses in al-Mawasi told the BBC that tents were engulfed in flames following a "powerful" explosion, causing the deaths of dozens of Palestinians including children. One man said he woke to "screaming and panic" and watched as "the flames spread rapidly from one tent to another". Israel has previously told Palestinians to evacuate from other parts of Gaza to al-Mawasi. The Israeli military did not immediately comment but said that it was looking into reports of the strikes. Civil defence spokesman Mahmoud Bassal said that two missiles had hit tents in the coastal al-Mawasi area near the southern city of Khan Younis, killing at least 16 people, "most of them women and children". Twenty-three others were wounded, he said. Video verified by the BBC showed the charred remnants of the camp with belongings strewn across the ground and survivors surveying the damage. Survivors described waking to the "sound of screaming and panic" after a "powerful" explosion hit the encampment. "I rushed outside and saw the tent next to mine engulfed in flames," a man told the BBC's Gaza Lifeline programme. "Women were running out, trying desperately to escape the fire," he continued. "Many martyrs were lost in the fire and we were helpless to save them. It was heartbreaking to watch them die right in front of us, unable to do anything as the flames spread rapidly from one tent to another." He said that a "large number" of children had died. A displaced woman from Khan Yunis said that the strike had killed 10 members of one family while they were sleeping, with another five family members injured. A man described rushing to the scene with others after hearing the explosion and attempting to extinguish the flames by throwing sand on the tents. "But we failed," he said. "The fire was too intense, consuming the tents and the people inside. We were helpless, we couldn't do anything to save them." Amande Bazerolle, an emergency coordinator for Medicines Sans Frontiers (MSF) in Gaza, said the strikes had occurred close to their office and MSF received some of the victims. "Last night it was very close to our office in the south. When the tents were targeted and caught on fire we received the patients. Most of them are actually dead and arrive dead but we have some very critical patients," she told the BBC. Gaza's civil defence agency said further air strikes killed seven people in the northern town of Beit Lahia, two near al-Mawasi and 10 people in Jabalia, including seven members of one family in one attack and three people at a school building being used as a shelter in another. In a statement on Thursday, the Israeli military said that strikes over the past two days had "struck over 100 terror targets" including "terrorist cells, military structures and infrastructure sites". The IDF said that earlier in the week strikes in the area of Khan Younis had killed Yahya Fathi Abd al-Qader Abu Shaar, the head of Hamas' weapons smuggling network. It said steps had been taken to mitigate the risk of harm to civilians. Israel put Gaza under a complete blockade on 1 March and resumed the war on 18 March. Since then Israeli attacks have killed 1,691 people, the Hamas-run health ministry says. About half a million Palestinians have been displaced by renewed Israeli evacuation orders and Israel has incorporated 30% of Gaza into "security zones". On Thursday the heads of 12 major aid organisations said the humanitarian aid system in Gaza was "facing total collapse". "This is one of the worst humanitarian failures of our generation," the chief executives of 12 NGOs, including Oxfam and Save the Children, wrote in a statement. Israel says it aims to pressure Hamas to release hostages and has vowed to maintain the blockade. It claims there is no shortage of aid because 25,000 lorry loads of supplies entered during the ceasefire. Last week, Israel put forward a proposal for a renewed ceasefire. The 45-day truce would see the release of dozens of hostages. The war began on October 7, 2023 when Hamas carried out a cross-border attack on Israeli communities, killing around 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages according to Israeli tallies. Israel's military campaign against Hamas has killed at least 51,065 people, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry. Red Cross chief says Gaza is 'hell on earth' as Israeli assault continues
