Sweden PM says to summon Israel envoy over Gaza aid access

Sweden will summon the Israeli ambassador to protest against Israel’s refusal to freely allow aid into Gaza, Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said Monday.

“We do not support what the Israeli government is currently doing by denying access to Gaza. Absolutely not,” he said, according to TT news agency.

A spokesperson for Mr. Kristersson confirmed this summons to AFP.

“We have been very clear about this, both nationally and with many other European countries. The pressure is now increasing, there is no doubt about it. And for very good reasons,” the Swedish leader added.

Israel’s block on aid since early March, which has caused severe shortages of food and medicine, was partially lifted last week in the face of mounting international indignation.

Kristersson also said he was in favour of a reassessment of the association agreement between the European Union and Israel.

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The bloc has ordered a review of it to see if Israel is respecting human rights and democratic principles.

“This requires a consensus, and we are not there yet. But many of us are working in that direction,” he said.

“The current actions of the Israeli government are pushing more EU countries to impose stricter demands on Israel.”

According to French diplomats, 17 of the 27 EU members states have so far said they back a review of the agreement.

But major power Germany has defended the deal as “an important forum… to discuss critical questions” over Gaza.

Separately, a British surgeon visiting a Gaza hospital said Monday she had “never seen so many blast injuries” as Israel ramps up operations in the coastal Palestinian territory ravaged by 20 months of war.

“I’ve never seen so many blast injuries in my life and I’ve never seen so many injuries in Gaza in my life,” said Victoria Rose, a part of a British medical delegation to Nasser Hospital in south Gaza’s Khan Yunis.

Rose, who has previously visited Gaza to work, said she had seen a lot of severe burns, typical injuries for people who have been in an explosion.

“We’re seeing these injuries in really small children as well”, Rose said from Nasser Hospital’s paediatric wing.

With Israel conducting dozens of air strikes every day in Gaza since restarting bombardments on March 18, humanitarians have said that nowhere is safe in Gaza.

The surgeon added that the large burns she had witnessed during her visit “are very difficult to survive from even in the Western countries where there is no war, and we have functioning hospitals and all the medical supplies at our fingertips.”

“So, here, most of these burns are going to be unsurvivable.”

Rose said the other type of injuries from blasts occurred when “whatever is around you gets whipped up in the explosion and ejected at very high force, and that then hits the civilians and it causes penetrating injuries”.

Often, the victims suffer partial or complete amputations in the bombings, Rose said, and because they are living in tents they turn up with large amounts of dirt in their wounds.

“Our first course of action is to try and clean the wounds, and then to try and cover them and salvage as much of the body part as we can.”

These challenges are compounded by the dwindling number of functional medical facilities in Gaza, Rose said, including Nasser Hospital.

“On the second floor, one of the wards has been blown up, and also on the fourth floor the burns unit was blown up”.

The UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said last week that “94 per cent of the hospitals in Gaza are now damaged or destroyed, and half of them are no longer operational”.

Rescuers said Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip killed at least 52 people on Monday, 33 of them in a school turned shelter.