Her bed is on the third floor of Gaza’s Shifa hospital, where shafts of warm afternoon sunshine reach in from the window. The ward is crowded, and the bed on which Asma’a Abu Me’tiq lay is curtained off from the rest and surrounded by the blankets her sister-in-law uses when she sleeps on the floor next to her at night.
Gaza’s population has been reduced to a ”subhuman existence” where basic humanitarian needs are going unmet in the face of rapidly deteriorating conditions, according to a senior United Nations official. An Israeli economic blockade on the Gaza Strip has produced shortages of fuel and basic supplies and has closed most private businesses and pushed up poverty rates.
A Palestinian journalist who died in Gaza on Wednesday was killed by metal darts from a shell fired by an Israeli tank, doctors said on Thursday. Thousands gathered for the funeral of Fadel Shana (23), a Reuters cameraman. His body was carried through the streets of Gaza City, draped in a Palestinian flag.