Some 25,000 sick and injured Palestinians are waiting today for treatment outside the besieged Gaza Strip, medical sources warned.
The health authorities of that territory criticized in a statement the closure, for a month, of the Rafah crossing, on the border with Egypt.
In early May, the Israeli army occupied the vital crossing, which for the previous seven months was Gaza’s only window to the world, allowing in food, fuel and medicine, while evacuating the wounded and sick.
The enclave’s Ministry of Health specified that many of them could save their lives if they receive treatment abroad.
15 days ago, the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor warned that more than 11,000 injured people are stranded in the territory without the possibility of receiving medical care abroad, as well as 10,000 cancer patients and another two thousand with various ailments.
By blocking the area, “Israel reinforced its control by imposing a paralyzing siege on Gaza, isolating it from the outside world and causing the deaths of dozens of wounded and sick people,” criticized the NGO.
Days earlier, the director general of the Government Media Office in Gaza, Ismail al-Thawabta, also warned of the danger that the closure of Rafah represents for thousands of wounded and sick.
Al-Thawabta stressed that the territory’s Health system collapsed due to eight months of attacks from that country.
