Halifax District RCMP Seek Public Assistance to Identify Driver | SaltWireGAZA - Gaza medical chiefs are turning to volunteers to help run an emergency service buckling under Israel's offensive as ambulances struggle to reach bomb sites past rubble-strewn roads and with ever-depleting supplies of fuel.
"I have not gone home since the first day of the war. I shower here, sleep here and eat here," said Loay al-Astal, a volunteer emergency worker in Khan Younis, in the south of the enclave. Israel has ordered civilians to leave the northern half of the Gaza Strip for the south, but has continued an intense bombardment across the enclave and many people are refusing to leave.
Astal, the volunteer who had trained at university to be a paramedic but was unemployed when the war began, described an incident in which some of his colleagues had nearly been killed by an air strike that blew out the windows of their ambulance.He is haunted by the memory of trying to save a woman who was buried up to her neck in rubble from an air strike."There was a cut on her head and I rushed to treat the wound," Astal, 33, said.
"Ambulances are about to go out of operation because we have very limited fuel left. We have problems with communications. We lose touch with the ambulances that leave here," said volunteer driver Sari al-Najjar. Thousands of people have gathered at hospitals in Gaza City, in the north of the enclave, many sheltering in makeshift tents hoping for some safety from the bombardment.