(Adds WHO comment on medical volunteers) By Sophie Hardach PARIS, Jan 16 (Reuters) - Medecins Sans Frontieres cannot reach sick and injured civilians in Gaza because of Israel's bombing campaign and may have to pull out if the security situation worsens, officials from the aid group said on Friday. Other doctors around the world called on Israel and Islamist Hamas fighters to grant access to victims of the offensive, which has killed more than 1,100 Palestinians in three weeks. As Israeli forces pushed deep into the city of Gaza despite global pressure on their government to agree a ceasefire, aid workers said the incessant bombing made their work impossible. "(We ask Israel to) guarantee their access and to respect medical staff and medical structures, which is basically the Geneva Convention," MSF Secretary-General Filipe Ribeiro told Reuters after a news conference at the group's Paris office. Under the Geneva Convention, medical staff and hospitals must be spared and the wounded must be collected and cared for. Asked if MSF might pull out of Gaza, Ribeiro said: "Yes, if the situation deteriorates, if it's too risky for our team, then yes, we can imagine leaving. As of today, not yet." In Geneva, the World Medical Association welcomed a plan by Israel to set up a field hospital in a combat-free zone on the border of the Gaza Strip. But it said it would be difficult to take patients there unless the warring parties cooperated. MSF's medical coordinator Cecile Barbour, who spoke by telephone from Gaza, said Israel continued the bombings despite its pledge of a daily break in hostilities. Some 5,100 Palestinians have been wounded in the conflict, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. Of those killed, a Palestinian rights group said about 700 were civilians. AID CHAOS Israel says that Hamas fighters are using civilians as human shields. Its own losses are three civilians, killed by rocket fire into Israel from Gaza, and 10 soldiers. "Far from getting better, we have reason to believe it has got worse," said Christophe Fournier, president of the international council of MSF, which is also known as Doctors Without Borders. "The emergency services, our teams cannot access the victims," he told reporters. The World Health Organisation told reporters in Geneva on Friday that Gaza doctors were struggling to cope with depleted supplies and equipment "in a deplorable state." To add to the confusion, more than 100 volunteers have streamed into Gaza to assist relief efforts, some armed with good intentions but few relevant skills. WHO officials said volunteers unaccustomed to trauma work risked interrupting life-saving emergency aid by local doctors. MSF's doctors used to work in major hospitals in Gaza but stopped two days ago after the al-Quds hospital was hit by Israeli forces. With Palestinian staff and patients trapped in their houses, it has had to shut four of its clinics and is now running only one post-surgical centre. Two MSF relief teams of surgeons, doctors and nurses are waiting for Israel to grant them safe passage to enter Gaza. (Additional reporting by Laura MacInnis in Geneva; Editing by Jon Boyle)
Tomato sauce is splattered on a poster depicting the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin after shrapnel from a rocket caused damage in the kitchen of a house in the port ...
International Humanitarian Law
