What doctors volunteering in Gaza’s stricken hospitals witnessed under Israeli siege

Special What doctors volunteering in Gaza’s stricken hospitals witnessed under Israeli siege
At a news conference at the UN HQ in New York City last week, four doctors, who worked with teams in Gaza to support its healthcare system, described witnessing ‘appalling atrocities.’ (Supplied)
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Updated 26 March 2024
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What doctors volunteering in Gaza’s stricken hospitals witnessed under Israeli siege

What doctors volunteering in Gaza’s stricken hospitals witnessed under Israeli siege
  • During visits to UN and Washington, medics described “appalling atrocities” committed against the enclave
  • Doctors urged the international community to press for an immediate ceasefire and to allow aid into Gaza

NEW YORK CITY: Four doctors from the US, UK and France, who have been working with teams in Gaza to support its healthcare system, have described witnessing “appalling atrocities” under Israel’s military offensive.

The four specialists told an event at the UN headquarters this week that doctors in the enclave are faced with “horrific decisions” almost every day as a result of the war.

Nick Maynard, a cancer surgeon from the UK city of Oxford, has for the best part of the past 15 years been traveling to the Gaza Strip to teach, carry out surgeries, and help develop local healthcare capacity.

Because of his long association with Gaza, Maynard thought he was prepared for what awaited him when he again set foot in the Palestinian territory last December as part of the first UK emergency medical team to arrive since the outbreak of war in October.




According to the World Health Organization, there have been 164 attacks on healthcare infrastructure in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7. (AFP)

However, what he encountered during his two weeks at Al-Aqsa Hospital were “the most appalling atrocities,” he said. “I saw things that I never would have expected to have seen in any healthcare setting.”

The Israeli government says its military does not target civilians or hospitals, and blames Hamas for conducting military operations and launching rockets from crowded residential areas. Maynard rejects this claim.

Any medic who has worked in Gaza in recent months can dispel “with absolute certainty” the notion that Israel is conducting targeted bombing of Hamas militants and is protecting civilians,” he said.

“There is mass, indiscriminate bombing, killing many, many thousands of civilians, and a very clear targeting of healthcare facilities and workers, and deliberately destroying the infrastructure of all the hospitals to make it almost impossible to provide anything resembling normal healthcare to the population of Gaza.”

In fact, Maynard said Israel’s actions resemble the dictionary definition of genocide — designed to drive the Palestinian people out of Gaza.

“I spent some time looking at the definition of genocide in a variety of dictionaries,” he said. “And what is going on in Gaza fulfills every single definition of genocide that I have read.

“To those of us who’ve been on the ground there, and indeed, more importantly, all the Gazans I’ve spoken to, say the endgame of the Israeli government is to force them out completely from Gaza, to eradicate them from that land.”

Maynard was speaking at the UN headquarters in New York, where he was among a delegation of doctors meeting with UN representatives, who later met with Biden administration officials and members of Congress in Washington on Friday.

Their goal is to “instill a sense of urgency,” make sure US decision-makers and the international community “know what we know,” and hammer home that “the only way to prevent that ongoing humanitarian catastrophe is an immediate and permanent ceasefire.”

According to the World Health Organization, there have been 164 attacks on healthcare infrastructure in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7, when the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel triggered Israel’s retaliation against the group’s Gaza stronghold.




More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began. (AFP)

The UN agency says more than 400 medical workers have been killed since the conflict began. Before the war there were 6,000 beds at 39 hospitals in Gaza. Now roughly 295 hospital beds remain.

Israel has accused Hamas of building a vast tunnel network under Gaza’s hospitals, which it claims contain command centers, weapons caches, and places for holding Israeli hostages taken during the Oct. 7 attack.

“I’ve paid many visits to Al-Shifa Hospital and a lot of the other hospitals as well and I’ve never, in any service, any time during my visits, seen any evidence of military activity of any Hamas militants in any of the hospitals,” said Maynard.

“The Israelis have provided no credible evidence whatsoever to support those claims.”

Also among the doctors’ delegation was Zaher Sahloul, a Syrian-American doctor who is co-founder and president of MedGlobal, an NGO that provides emergency response and health programs around the world.

Sahloul, who was in Gaza in January, said the enclave is reaching a “tipping point.”

“Gaza at this stage is unlivable because of the persistent destruction of the infrastructures that are required for life,” he said.

The continued squeeze on deliveries of humanitarian assistance and commercial goods is pushing the population to the brink of famine, particularly in northern Gaza, with malnutrition and food insecurity reaching “catastrophic levels,” said Sahloul.

INNUMBERS

• 164 Attacks on healthcare infrastructure in Gaza since Oct. 7.

• 400 Medical workers killed since eruption of conflict.

• 295 Hospital beds currently available in Gaza.

Source: WHO

Chronic conditions, such as heart disease, diabetes, and various cancers that require regular medication, dialysis, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy, are going untreated as a result of shortages and the destruction of healthcare infrastructure, he added.

More than 30,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza since the conflict began, including 13,000 children, according to the local health ministry.

Sahloul believes this is “an underestimate of the real numbers,” however, as roughly 5,000 people are still thought to be buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

And these numbers “will continue to accelerate even if the war stops right now,” he said.

“The collapse of the healthcare system will lead to pregnant women dying from bleeding and diarrhea patients dying from dehydration.”




Zaher Sahloul, who was in Gaza in January, said the enclave is reaching a “tipping point.” (Supplied)

And if Israel follows through on its threat to mount an attack on Rafah, Sahloul fears such an incursion will result in a “bloodbath,” and the death of an estimated 250,000 people.

During his address to UN officials, Sahloul showed a photograph of Hiam Abu Khodr, a Palestinian child who lost her father and brother when a bomb destroyed her home. Her mother was also injured in the blast. Hiam, meanwhile, suffered third-degree burns to 40 percent of her body.

“If you want to define post-traumatic stress disorder, this is what it looks like in the face of a child who is 7 years old,” said Sahloul.

Hiam waited weeks for an evacuation to Egypt for treatment. However, she died of her injuries two days after leaving Gaza. According to Sahloul, just 10 percent of the 8,000 patients in need of evacuation for treatment abroad have been able to leave.

Sahloul described “apocalyptic” scenes in the few hospitals that remain partially functional in Gaza, where the wounded brought into overcrowded wards are mostly treated on the floor. He described the case of 12-year-old Mohmad Abu Shahla, who arrived unable to breathe.




Any medic who has worked in Gaza in recent months can dispel “with absolute certainty” the notion that Israel is conducting targeted bombing of Hamas militants and is protecting civilians,” said Nick Maynard. (AFP)

Mohmad had surgery to remove shrapnel from his abdomen before he was whisked to the intensive care unit where Sahloul tended to him. However, the boy “never woke up.”

“We were not able to communicate with his family. We sent him to the morgue. And I made a copy of his death certificate, to keep it as a proof.”

On Thursday, displaced civilians camped out in the grounds of Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza were ordered to leave immediately as Israeli forces continued their raid on the hospital complex.

Scores of people have reportedly been killed and 70 health workers arrested during the raid, with thousands more civilians sent south to Rafah, where some 1.4 million people were already hemmed before recent attacks on Khan Younes.

While many “incredibly heroic” healthcare workers decided to stay, Thaer Ahmad, a Palestinian-American emergency medicine physician who was with Sahloul in Gaza in January and who also spoke at the UN event, chose to evacuate before the raid.

On his way into Gaza, Ahmad said he saw “hundreds of trucks” lined up on the Egyptian side of the border waiting to bring aid into the enclave.




The Israeli government says its military does not target civilians or hospitals. (AFP)

“We know that these trucks have baby formula. We know that they have many needed items,” including diapers, inhalers, and sedatives for pain relief, he said.

“This is something that we could be using for our patients who are in pain as we’re trying to reset their fractures, clean their burns. It’s an incredibly painful process and this is something that can help. We’re not able to get this into the Gaza Strip because the trucks are stalled.

“Or if someone is having difficulty breathing as you may suspect may happen as bombs are dropping, and air fills with smoke, we’re not able to get a rescue inhaler to be able to treat their asthma.

“Or diapers for families. We’ve heard of people having to use plastic bags because they cannot find diapers and if they do find them, the price is incredibly high because of inflation and the lack of supplies.

“I hope that this can bring home the urgency that exists on the ground. We need our hospitals to be able to stand. We need the bombs to stop dropping, hopefully through a ceasefire. And we hope that we can get the necessary items in to help alleviate the incredible amount of suffering that’s taking place in the Gaza Strip.”

Also among the doctors’ delegation was Amber Alayyan, a pediatrician from Texas, who has been working with Medecins Sans Frontieres for 13 years.

As a result of the scarcity of medicines, Alayyan said, doctors are faced with “horrific decisions,” sometimes having to intubate patients without anesthetics.

Displaced people with nowhere to go are sheltering in hospitals and sleeping on beds intended for patients, she said.

“What does that mean for injured people? They arrive, they get a quick and dirty surgery in an emergency room or in an operating theater, and they have nowhere to be hospitalized afterward.

“Or when they are, they’re lost in the hospital and our teams spend all day searching for the patients they just operated on 12 hours before.

“The longer the war goes on, the longer these wounds have to rot. I mean really rot. No hospital in the world — high-income, low-income — could cope with the amount of injuries that we’re seeing and the needs that we’re seeing on the ground.”

The collapse of Gaza’s health system and shortages of food have left pregnant and lactating women and their newborns especially vulnerable, said Alayyan.

These women “were already facing high iron deficiency, anemia, before the war, which put them at risk for hemorrhage during birth,” she said.




“All the Gazans I’ve spoken to, say the endgame of the Israeli government is to force them out completely from Gaza, to eradicate them from that land,” Nick Maynard. (AFP)

“With the war, it puts them in a state of undernourishment and potentially malnutrition, which means that they can’t breastfeed their children properly. The milk doesn’t necessarily come in and it’s definitely not enough.

“The other population is children under 2 years, which is the breastfeeding age. Those children need to be breastfed. If they can’t, then they need a formula. To have formula you need clean water. None of these things are possible.”

She said women are “squeezing fruit dates into handkerchiefs and drip feeding their children with some sort of sugary substance to nourish them.”

“How many people are going to need prosthetics? What is the socioeconomic status of Gaza going to look like in five years? In three years? In three months? How can this population, that is so incredibly resilient, rebuild itself? And the longer the war goes on, the harder this becomes.”




“No hospital in the world — high-income, low-income — could cope with the amount of injuries that we’re seeing,” said Amber Alayyan.

Ahmad said he has often heard it said in Gaza that “there is a war after the war.”

“And it’s a day of reckoning for the people, to think about everything that they’ve lost, all of the struggles that they’ve been through.”

He added: “Oftentimes, what we can see is there can be a paralysis by analysis. And there could be a lot of deliberations that take place.

“We just want to impress upon the people who are at the table that this is very urgent and we need things to change within the next few hours or days, not weeks.”


Aid only ‘delaying deaths’ as Sudan counts down to famine: agency chief

Aid only ‘delaying deaths’ as Sudan counts down to famine: agency chief
Updated 49 min 32 sec ago
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Aid only ‘delaying deaths’ as Sudan counts down to famine: agency chief

Aid only ‘delaying deaths’ as Sudan counts down to famine: agency chief
  • “We have the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet in Sudan, the biggest hunger crisis, the biggest displacement crisis,” Norwegian Refugee Council chief Jan Egeland said
  • “I met women barely surviving, eating one meal of boiled leaves a day“

CAIRO: War-torn Sudan is on a “countdown to famine” ignored by world leaders while humanitarian aid is only “delaying deaths,” Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) chief Jan Egeland told AFP on Saturday.
“We have the biggest humanitarian crisis on the planet in Sudan, the biggest hunger crisis, the biggest displacement crisis... and the world is giving it a shrug,” he said in an interview from neighboring Chad after a visit to Sudan this week.
Since April 2023, war has pitted Sudan’s regular army against the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), killing tens of thousands of people and uprooting more than 11 million.
The United Nations says that nearly 26 million people inside Sudan are suffering acute hunger.
“I met women barely surviving, eating one meal of boiled leaves a day,” Egeland said.
One of few organizations to have maintained operations in Sudan, the NRC says some 1.5 million people are “on the edge of famine.”
“The violence is tearing apart communities much faster than we can come in with aid,” Egeland said.
“As we struggle to keep up, our current resources are merely delaying deaths instead of preventing them.”
Two decades ago, allegations of genocide brought world attention to Sudan’s vast western region of Darfur where the then government in Khartoum unleashed Arab tribal militias against non-Arab minorities suspected of supporting a rebellion.
“It is beyond belief that we have a fraction of the interest now for Sudan’s crisis than we had 20 years ago for Darfur, when the crisis was actually much smaller,” Egeland said.
He said Israel’s wars in Gaza and Lebanon and Russia’s war with Ukraine had been allowed to overshadow the conflict in Sudan.
But he said he detected a shift in the “international mood,” away from the kind of celebrity-driven campaigns that brought Hollywood star George Clooney to Darfur in the 2000s.
“More nationalistic tendencies, more inward-looking,” he said of Western governments led by politicians compelled to “put my nation first, me first, not humanity first.”
“It will come to haunt” these “short-sighted” leaders, when those they failed to assist in their homeland join the tide of refugees and migrants headed north.
In Chad, he said he had met young people who just barely survived ethnic cleansing in Darfur, and had made the decision to brave the perilous crossing of the Mediterranean to Europe even though they had friends who had drowned.
Inside Sudan, one in every five people has been displaced by this or previous conflicts, according to UN figures.
Most of those displaced are in Darfur, where Egeland says the situation is “horrific and getting worse.”
The North Darfur state capital of El-Fasher has been under siege by the RSF for months, nearly disabling all aid operations in the region and pushing the nearby Zamzam displacement camp into famine.
But even areas spared the devastation of war “are bursting at the seams,” Egeland said. Across the army-controlled east, camps, schools and other public buildings are filled with displaced people left to fend for themselves.
On the outskirts of Port Sudan — the Red Sea city where the army-backed government and UN agencies are now based — Egeland said he visited a school sheltering more than 3,700 displaced people where mothers were unable to feed their children.
“How come next door to the easiest accessible part of Sudan... there is starvation?” he asked.
According to the UN, both sides are using hunger as a weapon of war. Authorities routinely impede access with bureaucratic hurdles, while paramilitary fighters have threatened and attacked aid workers.
“The ongoing starvation is a man-made tragedy... Each delay, every blocked truck, every authorization delayed is a death sentence for families who can’t wait another day for food, water and shelter,” Egeland said.
But in spite of all the obstacles, “it is possible to reach all corners of Sudan,” he said, calling on donors to increase funding and aid organizations to have more “guts.”
“Parties to conflicts specialize in scaring us and we specialize in being scared,” he said, urging UN and other agencies to “be tougher and demand access.”


Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza

Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza
Updated 23 November 2024
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Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza

Hamas armed wing says Israeli woman hostage killed in north Gaza
  • Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed
  • The woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger

GAZA: Hamas’s armed wing said Saturday an Israeli woman taken hostage during the October 2023 attack had been killed in a combat zone in northern Gaza and the Israeli military said it was investigating.
Ezzedine Al-Qassam Brigades spokesman Abu Obeida said contact had been restored with the woman’s captors after a break of several weeks and it was established that the hostage had been killed in an area of north Gaza where the Israeli army has been operating.
Abu Obeida’s statement did not further identify the hostage or say how or when she was killed.
The Israeli army told AFP it was looking into the claim.
Abu Obeida said that the woman had been held with a second female hostage whose life was in danger.
During last year’s Hamas attack which triggered the Gaza war, militants took 251 hostages, of whom 97 are still held in Gaza, including 34 the army says are dead.
Ten female hostages, including five soldiers, were believed to remain alive in custody before Abu Obeida’s statement, according to an AFP tally.
During a one-week truce in November last year, 105 hostages were freed, including 80 Israelis who were exchanged for 240 Palestinian prisoners.
The Israeli government has come under immense public pressure to agree a new deal to bring the remaining hostages home while they are still alive.
The Hostage and Missing Families Forum campaign group did not wish to comment on Saturday’s claim.
“Nothing is known other than what Hamas is saying. Our only reliable source is the Israeli army,” the group told AFP.
Hamas’s attack on October 7 last year resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
Israel’s retaliatory campaign has killed 44,176 people in Gaza, according to figures from the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry that the United Nations considers reliable.


Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media

Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media
Updated 23 November 2024
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Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media

Fierce Israel-Hezbollah clashes at flashpoint town: Lebanon state media
  • Israel was “attempting to control the town” as it was “a strategic gateway for a rapid ground incursion,” the NNA said
  • It said Israeli troops had dynamited houses and were “trying to surround (Khiam) from all sides using extensive air and ground cover“

BEIRUT: Hezbollah fighters and Israeli troops engaged in fierce clashes Saturday at the key south Lebanon town of Khiam and in the coastal Bayada area several kilometers north of the border.
The official National News Agency (NNA) reported intense air and artillery bombardment of Khiam, about six kilometers (nearly four miles) from the frontier.
Israel was “attempting to control the town” as it was “a strategic gateway for a rapid ground incursion,” the NNA said.
It said Israeli troops had dynamited houses and were “trying to surround (Khiam) from all sides using extensive air and ground cover.”
Over the past two days, Hezbollah said its fighters had attacked Israeli troops about 20 times in and around the large town.
On September 23, Israel launched an intense air campaign in Lebanon, mainly targeting Hezbollah bastions in the south and east and in south Beirut.
A week later it sent ground troops across the border.
The NNA said Saturday that on the south coast, “the areas of Bayada and Wadi Hamoul are witnessing violent clashes,” and also reported air strikes and shelling.
It said Israeli troops tried to penetrate the area in order to encircle the town of Naqura via Bayada — “a strategic location” on the coast between Naqura and Tyre, 20 kilometers from the border.
Israeli tanks have been operating east of Khiam for more than three weeks, with the NNA reporting on Tuesday that the tanks had moved north of the town.
On October 29, the NNA said Israeli tanks entered Khiam’s outskirts in their deepest incursion yet into south Lebanon.
Khiam has symbolic significance. It was the site of a notorious prison run by the South Lebanon Army, an Israeli proxy militia, during its 22-year occupation of south Lebanon.
Israeli forces withdrew from the region in 2000.
The NNA also reported intense Israeli bombardment along the border, including around 70 shells pounding the town of Bint Jbeil alone.
All-out war erupted in September after nearly a year of limited cross-border exchanges of fire initiated by Hezbollah in support of Hamas, following its Palestinian ally’s October 7, 2023 attack that sparked the Gaza war.
The health ministry in Beirut says that more than 3,650 people have been killed in Lebanon since October 2023, with most deaths recorded since September this year.


Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8

Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8
Updated 23 November 2024
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Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8

Lebanon says Israeli strike on eastern town kills at least 8
  • The Israeli enemy strike on Shmostar killed eight people, including four children

BEIRUT: Lebanon said eight people were killed in an Israeli strike on Saturday in the east, with state media reporting the attack on a house killed a mother and her children.
“The Israeli enemy strike on Shmostar killed eight people, including four children, and nine others were injured, including four in critical condition,” a ministry statement said, giving a preliminary toll.
The official National Nwes Agency earlier said the attack “killed a family including a mother and her four children.”


Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician

Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician
Updated 23 November 2024
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Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician

Doctor at the heart of Turkiye’s newborn baby deaths case says he was a ‘trusted’ physician
  • Dr. Firat Sari is one of 47 people on trial accused of transferring newborn babies to neonatal units of private hospitals
  • “Patients were referred to me because people trusted me. We did not accept patients by bribing anyone from 112,” Sari said

ISTANBUL: The Turkish doctor at the center of an alleged fraud scheme that led to the deaths of 10 babies told an Istanbul court Saturday that he was a “trusted” physician.
Dr. Firat Sari is one of 47 people on trial accused of transferring newborn babies to neonatal units of private hospitals, where they were allegedly kept for prolonged and sometimes unnecessary treatments in order to receive social security payments.
“Patients were referred to me because people trusted me. We did not accept patients by bribing anyone from 112,” Sari said, referring to Turkiye’s emergency medical phone line.
Sari, said to be the plot’s ringleader, operated the neonatal intensive care units of several private hospitals in Istanbul. He is facing a sentence of up to 583 years in prison in a case where doctors, nurses, hospital managers and other health staff are accused of putting financial gain before newborns’ wellbeing.
The case, which emerged last month, has sparked public outrage and calls for greater oversight of the health care system. Authorities have since revoked the licenses and closed 10 of the 19 hospitals that were implicated in the scandal.
“I want to tell everything so that the events can be revealed,” Sari, the owner of Medisense Health Services, told the court. “I love my profession very much. I love being a doctor very much.”
Although the defendants are charged with the negligent homicide of 10 infants since January 2023, an investigative report cited by the state-run Anadolu news agency said they caused the deaths of “hundreds” of babies over a much longer time period.
Over 350 families have petitioned prosecutors or other state institutions seeking investigations into the deaths of their children, according to state media.
Prosecutors at the trial, which opened on Monday, say the defendants also falsified reports to make the babies’ condition appear more serious so as to obtain more money from the state as well as from families.
The main defendants have denied any wrongdoing, insisting they made the best possible decisions and are now facing punishment for unavoidable, unwanted outcomes.
Sari is charged with establishing an organization with the aim of committing a crime, defrauding public institutions, forgery of official documents and homicide by negligence.
During questioning by prosecutors before the trial, Sari denied accusations that the babies were not given the proper care, that the neonatal units were understaffed or that his employees were not appropriately qualified, according to a 1,400-page indictment.
“Everything is in accordance with procedures,” he told prosecutors in a statement.
The hearings at Bakirkoy courthouse, on Istanbul’s European side, have seen protests outside calling for private hospitals to be shut down and “baby killers” to be held accountable.
The case has also led to calls for the resignation of Health Minister Kemal Memisoglu, who was the Istanbul provincial health director at the time some of the deaths occurred. Ozgur Ozel, the main opposition party leader, has called for all hospitals involved to be nationalized.
In a Saturday interview with the A Haber TV channel, Memisoglu characterized the defendants as “bad apples” who had been “weeded out.”
“Our health system is one of the best health systems in the world,” he said. “This is a very exceptional, very organized criminal organization. It is a mistake to evaluate this in the health system as a whole.”
Memisoglu also denied the claim that he shut down an investigation into the claims in 2016, when he was Istanbul’s health director, calling it “a lie and slander.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week that those responsible for the deaths would be severely punished but warned against placing all the blame on the country’s health care system.
“We will not allow our health care community to be battered because of a few rotten apples,” he said.