8-8 | Michele Beck, a medical referent with Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), is in Gaza City. Here she explains what MSF teams have and have not been able to do in the last few days. A 72-hour truce began this morning, but it did not last long. During the truce we had planned to go to Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, in the south of the Gaza Strip, to see if they needed any additional supplies or staff. But we couldn't— we had to turn around as the fighting resumed. The truce would have given people here a bit of time to breathe and to bury their dead.
7-31 | Since the start of the war, several Palestinian members of the Médecins Sans Frontières team in Gaza have taken refuge in the organisation's premises. There they feel safer, and find a little comfort through supporting each other. Distraught by their powerlessness to protect their own children and stunned by the violence with which Gaza is being bombarded, they are trapped and resigned. One of them shares his thoughts. "The first day of the war I sent my wife and my two children to stay with my in-laws so that they would be better supported.
7-29 | Yesterday’s attack on Al Shifa hospital, where nearly 2,000 people are sheltering, demonstrates how civilians have nowhere safe to go and shows the current difficulties of providing emergency aid in Gaza. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) strongly condemns the 28 July attack on Gaza City’s Al Shifa hospital, where an MSF surgical team is working. Al Shifa is the main referral hospital for the entire Gaza Strip.
7-29 | Two car bombs exploded in towns in northern Syria on 26 July – one in Atmeh and the other in Azaz – causing large numbers of civilian casualties, including a Syrian staff member of the international medical organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF). MSF strongly condemns these deadly attacks on civilians. In Atmeh, in Idlib governorate, a car bomb exploded close to a busy market in the run-up before the major festival of Eid. Some 20 people were killed and around 80 were injured, according to local sources.
7-24 | 22 July, 8 am: The MSF team is returning from Al Shifa hospital, in the centre of Gaza City. Throughout the night, the wounded have been streaming into the emergency department – many of them patients transferred from Al Aqsa hospital, which was bombed the previous day. “It’s going to be a busy night,” says Alaa, an MSF driver, as the sun goes down on 21 July.