GENEVA, Aug 8 — The aid organisation Doctors Without Borders, or Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), has condemned what it called a level of "systemic violence against civilians" at the Israel-backed distribution centres in the Gaza Strip that it has rarely seen in its 54 years of operations, German Press Agency (dpa) reported.
In its report released yesterday titled, ‘This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing,’ the group said it treated an eight-year-old girl with a gunshot wound to the chest and a 12-year-old boy with a gunshot wound to the abdomen at two MSF clinics near facilities run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).
Both were reportedly injured while queueing for food.
MSF said the patients' accounts of their experiences at the GHF distribution centres are of dehumanisation and violence that is targeted, indiscriminate, and "more than alarming”.
Between June 7 and July 24, a total of 1,380 victims arrived at two MSF clinics, according to the report. Twenty-eight of them were already dead.
Among the injured were 71 minors, including 25 under the age of 15. All had come from GHF distribution centres, where shootings repeatedly occur.
From July 27 to August 3, more than 185 injured people were brought to the clinics from near the GHF centres, including individuals with gunshot wounds to the neck and head.
MSF calls for an end to GHF aid distribution.
The MSF teams are mentally prepared for conflict, the report said, but not for non-combatants being killed or maimed while trying to get help.
"In MSF’s nearly 54 years of operation, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians,” said Raquel Ayora, MSF general director.
