'There’s nothing left' in Gaza, Doctors Without Borders official says

By Burak Bir

LONDON (AA) - After arriving in the besieged Palestinian enclave in last month, a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) official said "there’s nothing left" in Gaza due to relentless Israeli strikes.

The MSF on Friday shared witness account of its project coordinator Jacob Burns, who entered southern Gaza on Dec. 17 to see the horrific situation for Palestinians on the ground.

"Gaza is gone basically, there’s nothing left. And it's difficult for them to see a life here again which is very, very sad," Burns, who has worked in Gaza before, said in his voice notes, now shared by the MSF on X.

"It was still a massive shock to cross at Rafah and immediately find ourselves in encircled by people looking in the cars to see if we were bringing food or water, finding the streets of Rafah just absolutely full of people building shelters," he added.

Burns mentioned how the condition is difficult for people who are trying to survive in "sort of shelters are fortune made out of this thin, most transparent plastic sheeting."

He said hospitals are "chaotic," and "more like a camp ... the place is just filled with people milling around trying to sleep, trying to find a corner to make their own, trying to find something to eat, to drink."

"When people are coming in, they're literally kneeling in the blood on the floor, to try to save the life of the person putting in a chest tube, even incubating on the floor which is just really, really extreme," the MSF staffer said.

Israel has launched relentless air and ground attacks on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas on Oct. 7.

At least 22,600 Palestinians have since been killed and 57,910 others injured, according to Gaza’s health authorities, while nearly 1,200 Israelis are believed to have been killed in the Hamas attack.

The onslaught has left Gaza in ruins, with 60% of the enclave's infrastructure damaged or destroyed and nearly 2 million residents displaced amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine.

*Ahmed Asmar contributed to this story