Didier Burnod spoke with our special envoy in Gaza, Valérie Gauriat.
Burnod: “The bombardments don’t seem to have lost any of their intensity after Sunday, which saw them at their most violent. You were witness to that. How have Palestinian civilians been reacting, trapped in this conflict? How are they managing day to day?”
Valérie Gauriat: “Well, Didier, before I answer that, I don’t know if you’ve just heard the explosions just behind me? It’s very frightening, the bombardment that just started again a few moments ago in Gaza.
We’ve seen plumes of black and white smoke go up from the same neighbourhood, Chagaya, that was hit hard during the night from Saturday to Sunday. Now the bombardment is gathering force again. Our local crew here next to me are signalling we should hurry things up. As for how the inhabitants feel, they are very frustrated and angry. We were moving around in the market this morning and there were a lot of people there, but fewer than usual, they told us. And people are just satisfied to survive; they say it’s not living any more, families don’t have a normal life any more, or the children. There are shortages of everything; they don’t have enough food or medicines, and they certainly aren’t free to move around inside this enclave that has become a veritable prison for them, as we see in a lot of slogans written up everywhere in the streets of Gaza.”
Burnod: “Valérie, with a death toll that’s rising every hour, how is it in the enclave’s hospitals?”
Gauriat: “Obviously, the hospitals are completely overwhelmed. We visited the Chifa hospital yesterday, which is Gaza’s main hospital, and there was such a crowd outside, a lot of people inside, doctors waiting to help, exhausted, exasperated… They also lack what they need to do their jobs, and that just got worse today with the bombing we’ve just witnessed.”
