By Palestine Chronicle Staff  

As Israeli forces continue to besiege the Nasser Hospital in south Gaza, Doctors Without Borders warns a Rafah ground invasion would be catastrophic.

As Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warn about “catastrophic” results of an Israeli ground offensive into Rafah, two Palestinians have been killed and five others wounded after shots were fired into the Nasser Hospital in southern Khan Younis.

“In the past 48 hours, MSF staff report shots fired at people inside Nasser hospital. Two people were killed, five others injured, including one nurse who was severely injured,” MSF said on X on Saturday, as Israeli forces continue their siege on the hospital.  

Medical staff, the organization stated, “are afraid to move within and around the hospital due to fear of being shot.”

Residents rescue a young man after an Israeli sniper shot at him in front of Nasser Hospital. pic.twitter.com/hfuAqKEEqA

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) February 11, 2024

“We are worried for the lives of MSF colleagues, medical staff and patients at Nasser Hospital. Medical facilities, their surroundings, and staff should always be protected, and access to hospitals unhindered.”

‘Ongoing War Crime’

The Islamic Resistance Movement, Hamas, said in a statement on Saturday that the “continued siege” by Israeli forces of the Nasser Medical Complex, as well as “the deployment of snipers around it, and the targeting of patients and medical staff constitute an ongoing war crime against what remains of the medical sector…”

The movement warned “against the occupation’s continued violation of medical facilities protected under humanitarian law.” 

“And we call on the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross to urgently intervene to protect the hospital and its facilities from systematic targeting”, as well as to “send medical teams to assess the catastrophic conditions at that hospital…”

Palestinians try to rescue a child injured by an Israeli sniper at the gate of the Nasser Hospital, west of Khan Yunis. pic.twitter.com/4iapfundyq

— PALESTINE ONLINE 🇵🇸 (@OnlinePalEng) February 10, 2024

‘Escalation in Ongoing Massacre’

In a statement on Friday, MSF warned that Israel’s planned ground offensive into Rafah “would be catastrophic and must not proceed.” 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Friday directed the army to draft a plan for evacuating the civilians in Rafah so that the ground offensive could go ahead. 

The announcement from the Israeli government “marks a dramatic escalation in this ongoing massacre,” the organization said, adding that “There is no place that is safe in Gaza and no way for people to leave.” 

MSF said “as aerial bombardment of the area continues, more than a million people, many living in tents and makeshift shelters, now face a dramatic escalation in this ongoing massacre.”

“Nowhere in Gaza is safe, and repeated forced displacements have pushed people to Rafah, where they are trapped in a tiny patch of land and have no options,” the statement said. 

On Tuesday, the spokesperson for the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Jens Laerke, told a UN briefing in Geneva that “We can warn what might unfold with the ground invasion and we can make clear what the law says and … under international humanitarian law, indiscriminate bombing of densely populated areas may amount to war crimes.” 

Even if injured people reach us, the chances of their survival are very small, says Dr Mohammed Harara from Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis pic.twitter.com/3g6SWdIoeg

— Sarah Wilkinson (@swilkinsonbc) February 9, 2024

Death Toll Mounts

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 28,064 Palestinians have been killed, and 67,611 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Moreover, at least 8,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all of the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

(Palestine Chronicle)