[Source: Reuters]

All Palestinian surgeon Bashir al-Hourani has to work with in the central Gaza school where he helps run a field clinic amid Israel’s pounding offensive is gauze and disinfectant as he treats walking wounded turned away from overstretched hospitals.

“We don’t have anything else,” he said, showing a bottle of iodine he was using to wash the long operating scar running down the torso and stomach of an injured man.

“This patient should be in hospital but because of overcrowding he was transferred to the field hospital,” he said.

“We have dozens like this patient. We have children it’s hard to treat. We change their dressings one day and the next we find infection because there is no sterilisation, there are no specialised places. There are no bin bags,” he said.

Al-Sayedah Khadija School is located in Deir al-Balah, in the centre of the tiny crowded Palestinian enclave that Israeli forces have been besieging, bombarding and in recent weeks invading in response to a deadly Hamas attack on Oct. 7.

The war has killed more than 20,000 people according to local health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza and wounded 50,000 more, all while hospitals have been put out of action and medical supplies nearly exhausted.

While some aid has entered Gaza in recent weeks via Egypt, it has been hard to distribute much beyond the immediate border area and hospitals elsewhere in the enclave are barely able to function, relief agencies say.