Claire Magone, director general of Doctors Without Borders (MSF), recently returned from a week-long stay in the Gaza Strip. The non-governmental organization runs several clinics in the territory, which Israel has been bombing and besieging almost continuously for two years.

When I arrived, Gaza City was already surrounded by tanks. Our clinic there was a "wound dressing clinic." We provided post-operative care for patients with extremely serious injuries, such as limbs that were shattered, burned or torn apart by the bombings. This care included cleaning wounds and removing necrotic tissue. Our teams continued to treat patients as tanks approached, drones hovered over neighborhoods and water was cut off. The army was pursuing a suffocation strategy, attacking tanker trucks, for example, even those clearly marked, as it did with one of ours in mid-September, and blocking all vital services. There was a constant sense of terror.

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