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médecins sans frontières
'Laboratory of Cruelty': MSF Calls for Immediate Dismantling of Gaza Humanitarian Foundation
"In MSF's nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians."
Aug 07, 2025
The international medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières on Thursday called for the immediate shuttering of the Israel-U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, denouncing the distribution sites it operates as "essentially death traps."
Backing up its condemnation, MSF released a new analysis—titled, "This is not aid. This is orchestrated killing"—which "documents the horrors witnessed" by the group's staff over recent weeks and the deadly failures of GHF, a group conceived of by the Israeli government with the backing of the Trump administration and staffed by private U.S. contractors after the United Nations-run distribution infrastructure, powered by hundreds of cooperating NGOs, was eviscerated by Israel earlier this year.
"Children shot in the chest while reaching for food. People crushed or suffocated in stampedes. Entire crowds gunned down at distribution points," said MSF's general director Raquel Ayora in a statement. "In MSF's nearly 54 years of operations, rarely have we seen such levels of systematic violence against unarmed civilians."
"The GHF distribution sites masquerading as 'aid' have morphed into a laboratory of cruelty," says Ayora. "This must stop now."
According to the report:
MSF operates two primary healthcare centres in southern Gaza located in close proximity to the GHF distribution sites. Between 7 June and 24 July 2025, these health centres received 1,380 injured people, including 28 dead bodies from the GHF sites. This represents only a fraction of the total number of people killed and injured at the distribution sites. MSF's two health centres—due to their sheer proximity to the GHF sites—now place biweekly orders for body bags.
Over a seven-week period in June and July 2025, MSF staff treated 174 people for gunshot wounds originating from the GHF sites. The vast majority of those injured—96 percent—were young men. This reflects a grim survival strategy: families are sending the youngest and fittest to retrieve food.
The report includes testimony from Palestinians who survived the carnage they experienced at the GHF-run sites.
"We're being slaughtered," said Mohammed Riad Tabasi, a patient treated at the MSF Al-Mawasi clinic in southern Gaza. "I've been injured maybe 10 times. I saw it with my own eyes, about 20 corpses around me. All of them shot in the head, in the stomach."
Joining an international chorus condemning the U.S.-Israeli aid effort—which was criticized loudly by humanitarian aid experts from the moment of its conception—MSF called "for the immediate dismantling of the GHF scheme; the restoration of the U.N.-coordinated aid delivery mechanism" and called on governments worldwide—but "especially the United States"—as well as private donors to "suspend all financial and political support for the GHF, whose sites are essentially death traps."
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In Yemen, a Humanitarian Pause is Urgently Needed
Mar 01, 2016
As war continues to rage uninterrupted in Yemen, a humanitarian pause is badly needed as the country spirals down to chaos, leaving the majority of the population in urgent need of medical care. Restrictions on access to medical supplies and care are key impediments to improving the situation of people in need. A five-day humanitarian pause would allow supplies and care to reach those people and relieve their dire health situation.
At the same time, attacks on health facilities continue. Last October, the World Health Organization (WHO) condemned the bombing of a Medecins Sans Frontieres' (MSF) supported hospital in Saada province in northern Yemen. MSF believes that, as a consequence, 200,000 people were left without medical care. That attack, which violated International Humanitarian Law, was the second one on an MSF-run facility in a month.
Since the beginning of Saudi Arabia's attacks on Yemen, conducted with U.S. support, more than 5,700 have died (almost half of them civilians) -including hundreds of women and children- and 28,753 injuries have been reported. Several health workers have also been killed, and 47 health facilities in 11 governorates have been damaged or closed as a result of the continuous violence.
Healthcare services in all public hospitals have been reduced, especially operating theaters and intensive care units. At the same time, disrupted immunization activities have increased the risks for measles and poliomyelitis, even though Yemen is presently free of polio. The breakdown of the water supply and sanitation systems has facilitated the spread of diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, as well as acute diarrheal diseases, particularly affecting children. Also, the early warning alert system for diseases has been seriously affected because of limited communication possibilities.
The country has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. According to UNICEF, 1.3 million Yemeni children younger than five years now suffer from acute malnutrition, compared to 850.000 before the war started. 320.000 are severely malnourished, twice the amount before the crisis. The little cash people have is to pay for food and gas -at greatly increased prices- leaving no money to afford health care.
The Lancet reports that approximately a quarter of the country's healthcare facilities are no longer functional. To make matters worse, Ronald Kremer from MSF says, "People do not dare to go to hospitals because they are afraid that they are targeted, and even if they want to go,, they may not have the means—even where public transport does exist, it is very expensive because of the fuel problems."
Fuel problems have increased the difficulty of obtaining clean water. The lack of a proper water supply and dire sanitation and hygiene have led to outbreaks of dengue and malaria. Many Yemenis store water in open containers, which becomes an ideal breeding ground for disease-transmitting mosquitoes.
So far, there are more than 2.5 million people who have become internally displaced persons (IDPs). To compound an already difficult situation, disrupted immunization campaigns have led to an increasing number of children affected with measles and rubella, particularly among IDPs living in overcrowded conditions. As a result of the conflict, many hospitals, laboratories, health warehouses, and administrative offices have closed. Primary care facilities have minimum access to medicines, supplies, and equipment. The fuel shortage has affected the proper operations of ambulances.
In this situation, a humanitarian pause is urgently needed. As proposed by the World Health Organization, a five-day pause would allow humanitarian organizations to respond to some of the most life-threatening needs of the people, particularly women and children caught in the middle of the conflict. An MSF doctor taking care of a badly hurt child in Syria realized that the child was desperately trying to tell him something. When he asked his translator what the child was saying, the translator responded, "Don't they realize that we are children?" A similar question could be asked in Yemen today.
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Thousands Threatened as Bulldozers Poised to Raze Calais Refugee Camp
Humanitarian groups vow to fight order of French judge who upheld the decision to begin demolitions
Feb 25, 2016
In a decision that promises to displace thousands of refugees, including hundreds of unaccompanied children, a French judge on Thursday upheld a regional official's approval for a plan to bulldoze the southern portion of the sprawling refugee camp in Calais, France. The judge's decision rejected an emergency appeal filed by a group of charities that sought to have the plan overturned.
The Guardian reported that the groups "filed an urgent appeal to a tribunal asking it to suspend the planned evacuation and demolition until safe and appropriate alternatives had been found for its residents, particularly unaccompanied minors."
However, a Pas-de-Calais prefect's office spokesman said that "[t]he order is applicable, except for common social areas," according to France 24. There are no details on when precisely demolition is set to begin.
Help Refugees, one of the charities behind the emergency appeal, said that it understood the judge's decision to mean that "churches, mosques, schools, the library, the women and children's center, and the youth center" will be spared demolition.
The humanitarian group noted that its "concerns particularly remain with the 305 unaccompanied children who will be evicted from their living quarters without proper assessment, safeguarding or suitable alternative provisions."
Help Refugees promised to appeal this most recent ruling immediately.
The Calais prefecture estimated that up to 1,000 would be displaced by their plan to raze part of the camp, but Help Refugees, which works directly with residents of the camp, says that the government's action will evict 3,455.
Dr. Philip McCarthy, CEO of the Catholic Social Action Network (CSAN), told Christian Today that if the camp is destroyed, "Some [people] will be forced into the arms of people traffickers, some will attempt the risky crossing of the Channel. Some will be dispersed only to come back. We're urging our government to intervene. No one should be living in the mud."
The Pas-de-Calais region where the camp is located has attempted several times in recent weeks to destroy large portions of "the Jungle," as the camp has become known. Residents met an earlier effort to destroy a third of the camp in January with promises of peaceful resistance, as Common Dreams reported.
Local officials' antagonism toward the camp has held firm despite those efforts. "We are pleased," Philippe Mignonet, Calais's deputy mayor, told the Washington Post regarding Thursday's court's decision. "We've been asking for that for ages."
Destruction of the camp is one of many pressing threats to refugees' lives in Calais, say humanitarian groups working in the camp.
A recent report by Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) lamented that "[t]hese are tough days for migrants in the Calais area; they are scared of many things. Not just of the police, or of the possibility that the camp might be razed. They are also scared of the locals. Civilians have beaten some people in the city or on the highway. They are afraid of everyone now, even those who are trying to help. And many believe that the French police condone such attacks, and so they don't feel like there is anyone there to protect them."
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