The injured lie over hospital floors, blood bubbling from untreated wounds. Doctors perform amputations without anaesthetic. For want of gauze, they rip up their gowns. After surgery, there is no water to wash the blood from their hands. Without sterilised equipment, hospitals spread disease rather than treat it. Many doctors who have worked in other war zones say that conditions in Gaza are the worst they have seen. “Hospitals, intended to be safe havens…have frequently turned into death traps,” says a report released in February by Physicians for Human Rights (phri), an Israeli watchdog.

On February 18th the World Health Organisation (who) said the Nasser hospital in Khan Younis, the biggest city in southern Gaza, where fighting is still fierce, was no longer functional. A study released the next day suggests that even if a ceasefire can be agreed, the damage to Gaza’s health system is so great that many more deaths will follow, even when the fighting stops.