The General Directorate of Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip announced that 82 of its personnel and officers were killed by the Israeli occupation’s firepower and over 270 were wounded, among them officers who were injured more than once, during the Israeli aggression that has been ongoing on the Strip since Oct.7, 2023.
In a statement to mark the World Humanitarian Day, the General Directorate of Civil Defense in the Gaza Strip added that 40 percent of their personnel were exposed to physical risks, pointing out that the volume of work provided during the war is equivalent to 40 years of work by the civil defense.
During the ongoing aggression on the Strip, the civil defense received 87,000 distress signals, and responded to 72,000 of them, resulting in 255,000 missions that varied between firefighting operations, pulling out victims, medical treatment and evacuation, the statement continued.
The Palestinian civil defense emphasized that it couldn’t be able to respond to 15,000 distress signals because of t
he shortage of fuel supplies while its equipment and capabilities came under attack, with the Israeli occupation forces closing many areas at which the Palestinians were taking shelter. It confirmed that it has accomplished 11,530 firefighting missions due to the use of incendiary shells by the Israeli occupation forces, which burned homes with their occupants and destroyed industrial and economic facilities.
The statement underlined that the Israeli aggression forced 11 firefighting trucks and rescue vehicles out of service, along with 2 rapid intervention vehicles, 4 tanker trucks, 8 ambulances, a hydraulic lift, and 12 administrative vehicles. It indicated that these practices underscored that Israel intentionally wanted to halt life-saving humanitarian interventions in the Palestinian enclave.
According to the statement, civil defense personnel have, hitherto, recovered 35,580 bodies of Palestinian martyrs among 40,000 martyrs who reached the hospitals, with the Israeli occupation preventing the retriev
al of 14,420 bodies. In fact, citizens managed to pull out 4,420 martyrs, while 10,000 remain under the rubble.
Additionally, the statement affirmed that the Israeli occupation rejected the coordination operations to allow entry of civil defense personnel, which obviously precluded the retrieval of 7,552 injured Palestinians in multiple areas across Gaza, in a manner that utterly contravenes the right to life.
The Palestinian civil defense spotted approximately 1,760 martyrs whose bodies were entirely decomposed, and no traces were found due to the use of internationally banned weapons by Israel. Nearly 8,240 Palestinians were subject to enforced disappearance by the Israeli occupation, whose fate is still unknown. Also, there are 2,210 bodies that have disappeared from various gravesites in the Gaza Strip, and others have gone missing from the areas targeted by the Israeli occupation forces.
The Palestinian civil defense highlighted that the occupation forces dropped nearly 85,000 bombs on the Gaza Strip
which devastated over 80 percent of urban structures and 90 percent of infrastructure, emphasizing that 17 percent of them were unexploded ordnances (UXO) and missiles, which are considered hazardous materials that endanger the Palestinians’ lives, and led more than 90 kids to perish due to tampering with these explosive devices which resemble food cans.
The statement stressed that the Israeli occupation army imposes a siege on the Palestinians in an area it alleges as safe and humanitarian zone, which is equivalent to 10.5 percent of the area of the Gaza Strip, in a way that utterly breaches all norms and leads to the repeated displacement of citizens. Additionally, the Israeli occupation committed 21 massacres in areas it alleged as humanitarian and directed the Palestinians to move to them, thus resulting in the martyrdom of 347 and injuring 766 others.
Source: Qatar News Agency