No surgeons. No ambulances. No medicines.
These are the conditions under which pediatrician Hussam Abu Safiya and his colleagues try to save lives in northern Gaza.
Dr. Safiya is the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the city of Beit Lahia and calls on the world to intervene to save his patients and his hospital.
On November 1, leaders of 15 UN agencies and humanitarian organizations warned in a statement that “the entire Palestinian population in northern Gaza is at imminent risk of dying from disease, famine and violence.”
“The situation in northern Gaza is apocalyptic. “The area has been under siege for almost a month, denied vital supplies while shelling continues… In the last few days alone, hundreds of Palestinians have been killed, most of them women and children,” the statement added.
The three hospitals in northern Gaza have been attacked by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF).
On October 25, the Israeli army bombed the Kamal Adwan hospital; Hours later, Israeli soldiers stormed the scene and detained dozens of people, including medical personnel.
Israeli troops withdrew two days later leaving a trail of destruction, and shelling of the hospital has continued.
Safiya told various media that His 21-year-old son died in the Israeli attack in Octoberwhom he buried next to a hospital wall.
The Israeli military said after the raid that it had “arrested 100 terrorists” and claimed that the hospital was used by Hamas, accusations denied by health officials*.
Below is BBC Mundo’s conversation with Hussam Abu Safiya from inside the Kamal Adwan hospital.
This interview was recorded on November 15 with the collaboration of the BBC Arabic Service.
What is the situation in the hospital?
We have a catastrophic situation, we have no surgeons and there is not a single ambulance.
Medical supplies have run out. We depended on the hospital’s reserves, but now they are completely depleted.
From time to time United Nations missions have brought some supplies, but they only last a day or two.
When was the last time you were given medical supplies?
The last time was about four weeks ago.
How many patients do you have now?
Kamal Adwan Hospital currently has 95 injured patients, most of whom are women and children. And there are many more displaced people in the yard.
Those who manage to reach the hospital are considered lucky. Most of the victims are still trapped under the rubble.
You have said that they desperately need surgeons…
Many of the patients require urgent surgical interventions, daily we lose one or two patients who need operations.
But the IDF, the Israeli army, has denied entry to medical delegations to perform surgeries in our hospital.
The siege of northern Gaza continues in full force and medical delegations and emergency teams are still unable to enter.
We have not received food or medical supplies.
We have oxygen stations, but we don’t have enough fuel, and oxygen stations need fuel to operate.
How many doctors remain in the hospital?
There are only five doctors left in Kamal Adwan, all specializing in pediatrics and internal medicine.
We cannot perform any surgical intervention.
We need specialists to treat the injuries we are seeing.
During last month’s raid, the Israeli military arrested dozens of medical staff. Do you know what happened to them?
To this day we do not know what happened to our colleagues.
About three weeks ago, the Israeli army took away about 45 members of our medical team, who worked in the surgery department and other specialties.
Therefore we are providing a minimum service.
The Israeli army attacked our hospital a few days ago; They started bombing the second and third floors, and five or six members of our staff were injured, one of them unfortunately required intensive care intervention.
* The Israel Defense Forces said its troops found weapons, cash and documents belonging to Hamas during the raid on the Kamal Adwan hospital in October.
The Israeli military on October 28 released a video purportedly showing the interrogation of an ambulance driver who had worked at Kamal Adwan Hospital, who claims that militants operated at the health facility. The man’s face appears blurry.
The authenticity of the video could not be verified by the BBC.
He told us that they don’t have any ambulance…
There is not a single ambulance available either at Kamal Adwan Hospital or al Awda Hospital, or at Indonesia Hospital, or anywhere else in the northern Gaza Strip.
Without ambulances, how do the injured get to the hospital?
The injured arrive alone walking, carried by other people, or transported in carts pulled by animals.
Unfortunately, by the time they reach the hospital they are often in critical condition with severe blood loss and most of them die.
Every day we receive a large number of calls from people asking us for help, but we cannot provide anything because there is no civil defense or ambulances.
We cannot help the people who are under the rubble.
What is the situation of patients who are children? Do they have malnutrition?
Currently, 25 children are staying at Kamal Adwan Hospital.
In the northern Gaza Strip even the food reserves that people once held are now running out. As a hospital, we rely on a very small supply of food and it is running out.
There are signs of severe malnutrition and dehydration, especially in children and the elderly.
In our hospital we cannot provide even a single decent meal to the staff working 24-hour emergency shifts.
What type of injuries do you see in children?
What we see are shrapnel wounds, burns and dismembered bodies.
The injuries are horrible and unimaginable; We see scenes that really make your hair stand on end.
Most of the cases we receive involve severe trauma: amputations of hands and legs, shrapnel lodged in the heads of children and women, and parts of the brain exposed outside the skull.
They are extremely difficult and heartbreaking scenes.
Most of these injuries are caused by shells fired from the tanks of the occupation forces.
What we face daily are bodies that are often severely dismembered.
Additionally, the bodies are often covered in a thick layer of gunpowder, making it difficult for us to breathe while treating them.
Even as I speak you can hear the continuous shooting and incessant shelling in the northern Gaza Strip. They almost never stop.
We have already appealed for medical personnel specialized in surgery to be allowed entry. But the Israeli army prohibits it.
I want to call on the world to urgently intervene to protect our hospital.
We must provide medical care to injured people and do so safely.
We are working under stress, we are working under bombing, we are working under fear.
What the UN says
The UN Independent International Commission on Palestinian Territories accused Israel of “a concerted policy to destroy Gaza’s health system.”
In its October report, the commission states that “Israeli security forces have deliberately killed, injured, detained, detained, mistreated and tortured medical workers, in addition to attacking medical vehicles, constituting the war crimes of intentional homicide and ill-treatment and the crime against humanity of extermination.”
On November 14, another UN Special Committee stated that Israel’s policies and practices in Gaza “conform to the characteristics of genocide,” citing among those practices “massive killings” and “the use of hunger as a weapon of war.” ”.
Israel has rejected accusations of genocide in Gaza.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has killed more than 43,000 people since October 7 of last year, including more than 16,000 children, and left nearly 100,000 injured, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
More than 10,000 people remain missing, presumably under rubble, according to the Palestinian civil defense.
The offensive followed a Hamas attack on Israel in which nearly 1,200 people were killed and more than 200 taken hostage.
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