‘They Are Burned Alive’: A Doctor Captures the Toll of War on Gaza’s Children
Dr. Ahmad Yousaf is an American pediatrician who recently returned from a medical mission with MedGlobal in Gaza. He shared rare footage from inside Al Aqsa Hospital, where he captured harrowing conditions for staff and patients, particularly children.
Dr. Ahmad Yousaf, an American pediatrician and the director of an intensive care unit in Arkansas, embarked on a medical mission to Gaza, believing his expertise could help patients receive the advanced health care he was accustomed to providing. But what he encountered far exceeded his worst expectations, compelling him to document the devastation.
“The primary thing that I did there was triaging and mass casualty,” Dr. Yousaf said. “This was not advanced I.C.U. care. We often never got there. Patients died.”
Dr. Yousaf volunteered with MedGlobal, a nonprofit based in the United States that provides humanitarian relief worldwide. After spending three weeks in one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, he described the severe toll of the war on medical workers and civilians, particularly children. He shared a record of what he witnessed, including rare footage from inside Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al Balah, with The New York Times.
During his stay at the hospital, medical teams worked tirelessly to manage the trauma casualties flooding in as the Israeli military continued bombing neighboring areas, including humanitarian zones.
Operating at three times the hospital’s capacity, staff members often had to treat patients, many of them children, on pieces of cardboard on the floor. They lacked critical supplies, including blood, gauze and anesthesia. Many patients died from their wounds.
“Decisions were made second to second, and we tried our best,” Dr. Yousaf said. “The longer I stayed there, I realized my role wasn’t being a physician, it was being a witness.”
Dr. Yousaf began sharing daily reflections with his friends and family on WhatsApp. One entry from June 30 describes a teenage boy whose first words after being extubated were: “Please let me call my dad. I just want to make sure he’s OK and knows I’m OK.”
Officials in Gaza have reported that at least 10,000 Palestinian children have been killed since the war began, with many more facing lifelong physical and mental injuries. More than 500 health care workers have been killed in the past nine months, according to international aid organizations.
Dr. Yousaf’s entries reflect the increasingly dire reality of life in Gaza. On July 9, he wrote: “Every time I think it can’t get worse, it does.”
An Israeli Terrorists airstrike early Saturday hit a school compound in northern Gaza where displaced Palestinians were sheltering, killing dozens of people, according to Gazan officials.
The Gaza Civil Defense emergency service said more than 90 were killed, but that number could not be confirmed, and two doctors at one hospital in the area gave slightly lower totals.
Many of those wounded in the Israeli Terrorists strike, including children, were arriving with severe burns covering much of their bodies, said Tayseer al-Tanna, a surgeon at Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City, who called the scene “very difficult to watch.”
Fadel Naim, a medical official at Al-Ahli Hospital who served for years as dean of the medical college at the Islamic University of Gaza, widely seen as a Hamas stronghold, said the hospital had received at least 70 bodies since Saturday morning. The strike was followed by a flood of people searching for loved ones missing in the wake of the explosion, he said.
Khamis Elessi, a doctor at the same hospital, in Gaza City, said more than 73 identified bodies were brought to the hospital morgue, as were another 10 who have yet to be identified because they were disfigured in the explosion
The Gaza Health Ministry’s numbers are believed to be broadly reliable, though there is often uncertainty in the immediate aftermath of specific strikes, and the destruction of the territory’s health system has made tolls harder to track.
Many of its offensives in recent days have targeted school grounds — a large number of which have been converted into makeshift shelters. The U.N. has said that strikes were escalating and that it was “horrified by the unfolding pattern.”
Philippe Lazzarini, the head of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, called the deadly attack “another day of horror” in Gaza. He called on all sides not to harm civilians or use schools for military purposes.
“It’s time for these horrors unfolding under our watch to end,” he said on social media. “We cannot let the unbearable become a new norm.”
The U.N. and other rights organizations have repeatedly said that there is no safe place in Gaza as areas people are ordered to evacuate to are subsequently targeted by Israeli airstrikes. Almost the entire population of Gaza — more than two million Palestinians — has been displaced, many people multiple times.
Donate for Palestine
| BANK | Account Number |
| BANK BRI: | 1791507534 |
| BANK BCA : | 0952397051 |
| BANK BNI | 1791507534 |
| BANK Cimb Niaga : | 707454936800 |
| BANK RAYA : | 001001424796315 |
| BTN : | 1501700001999 |
| HANA's BANK : | 14755057480 |
| Bank Mandiri : | 1330027242122 |
|
DIGIBANK : Foreign Currency A.N |
2074864818 |
| Confirm : | ahahanafiah5@gmail.com |
No comments:
Post a Comment