Israel begins flooding Gaza tunnels with seawater “on a limited basis,” US official says

There are barely “living conditions” for the people of the Gaza Strip, the emergency coordinator of operations for Doctors Without Borders, also known as Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), said Tuesday. 

“Living conditions…I mean it can barely be described as living conditions anymore. People are displaced once, twice, sometimes more. They just don’t know where to go anymore,” Marie-Aure Perreaut, who is based in the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza, told CNN’s Isa Soares in an interview. 

People sheltering in hospitals in Gaza are living in “horrendous conditions” without access to health care, she said.

While Gazans traveled to hospitals in search of safety, Perreaut said, they know that “this is just not the case.” 

She described a lack of food and water, cold temperatures, overcrowding, and widespread diseases in hospitals, saying that the situation is “very, very tough.” 

Many people are suffering from respiratory tract infections, diarrhea, and skin diseases such as scabies, she said.

"All of these are clear illustrations of the extremely tough and precarious living conditions,” Perreaut said, adding that, since health care centers were ordered to evacuate, people “just don’t have access to health care anymore.” 

Half of the patients that MSF was treating were children under the age of five, she said. 

“All those children are still living in those conditions, facing multiple evacuation orders in the south, and now, just do not have access to health care on top of it," Perreaut said.

Several hospitals in northern Gaza have ceased operations in recent weeks, saying they received orders from the Israeli military to evacuate. The Israeli military disputes issuing such an order. 

Fuel shortages have forced several hospitals in Gaza to close, while others have shut down due to airstrike damage, the World Health Organization has reported.  

The Israeli military says it only carries out operations in and around hospitals where they are being used by Hamas and other armed groups.