A war surgery team and a weapons contamination specialist are among 10 International Committee of the Red Cross experts who arrived in Gaza on Friday, entering alongside six ICRC trucks carrying urgently needed medical material and water purification supplies.
The arrival of new humanitarian personnel will increase the ICRC’s capacity to continue supporting hospitals and deliver life-saving trauma surgery, assist people desperate for clean drinking water, and to contribute to any future family reunification of released hostages.
This crucial humanitarian assistance is a small dose of relief, but it´s not enough. Our surgical team and medical supplies will help relieve the extreme pressure on Gaza’s doctors and nurses. But safe, sustained humanitarian access is urgently needed. This humanitarian catastrophe is deepening by the hour
The new medical material – for both north and south Gaza – includes war surgery kits, large packages of supplies used to treat people with wounds suffered in conflict. The kits can be used to treat between 1,000 and 5,000 people, depending on the severity of their injuries.
The water purification supplies contain chlorine tablets that can treat 50,000 liters of drinking water to help alleviate problems Gazans now face in finding safe, clean water.
The ICRC urges all parties to the conflict and states with influence to enable rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access in line with international humanitarian law. Sustained humanitarian access, and a sustained supply of humanitarian assistance, is desperately needed across Gaza.
About the ICRC
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is a neutral, impartial and independent organization with an exclusively humanitarian mandate that stems from the Geneva Conventions of 1949. It helps people around the world affected by armed conflict and other violence, doing everything it can to protect their lives and dignity and to relieve their suffering, often alongside its Red Cross and Red Crescent partners.
