The picture of suffering in Gaza is well-known, despite obstruction of journalists and news flow from the region, Cypriot emergency coordinator for Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Nikolas Papachrysostomou said on Tuesday.

“There are 50,000 pregnant women in Rafah and 5,500 births take place monthly,” with these women increasingly having no place to go, Papachrysostomou said in an interview with state broadcaster CyBC.

The UAE hospital, which MSF supports, and where they recently managed to increase beds from 40 to 80 in makeshift areas of the parking lot, was bombed on Saturday, exactly at its entrance, killing unarmed civilians and scaring people off from seeking help at the facility, Papachrysostomou detailed.

Two other main hospitals are already defunct and the tiny number of beds currently available completely pales in comparison with the enormous needs of pregnant women, he added.

“We have had to evacuate one hospital after another, so far nine in total…where are we or the women to go?” he asked.

The doctor described scenes of desperate mothers ambushing aid lorries and hoisting their young children up to grab as many items as quickly possible.

On one occasion which he personally witnessed, 7,000 tons of food items disappeared in such a manner from the truck in 15 minutes, Papachrysostomou said.

What is happening in the last remaining “strip of the strip” in Rafah on the Egyptian border, is incomprehensible, he added.

“It is incredibly difficult to see what an ‘evacuation plan’ even means, for 1.5 million people who have nowhere to go,” he said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statements earlier in February.

“All evacuations to date have been perilous, with no guarantee of safety, marked by violations of humanitarian law,” Papachrysostomou said, adding, “We know what’s happening because it has happened to our own doctors.”

Five MSF members have been killed to date while on humanitarian missions, as well as family members, the doctor said.

“On February 20, Israeli forces bombed an MSF doctors’ shelter killing two family members and wounding another six, of whom five were women and children,” Papachrysostomou told the CyBC, noting that describing the war as a war against Hamas was nonsensical from a practical point of view, as there is no margin for precise military action in such a densely populated place.

“I have witnessed bombings from 50 metres off and these bombs kill anyone around,” he said.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s recent order to Israel to take all measures to prevent genocide, this is impossible to carry out, he noted.

“The way this war is being conducted, it is neither possible to carry out the [ICJ] measures nor to provide humanitarian aid,” which has currently dwindled to one tenth of the aid provided before the war.

Moreover, Israel has banned critical items, like pressurised oxygen tanks, fuel and generators which are essential for providing genuine help.

“There is no humanitarian aid to Gaza. There never has been. This is just what we tell ourselves so that we can sleep at night,” Papachrysostomou concluded.