New Delhi: Doctor Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a British-Palestinian war surgeon currently based in Gaza, attends to a patient every 10 minutes at the city’s main Al-Shifa Hospital.
“The last 11 days have been complete carnage,” Abu-Sitta told ThePrint over call Thursday from the hospital.
Abu-Sitta, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon, has previously served in Gaza and other conflict zones such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq and south Lebanon.
Yet, he grappled with a mix of emotions as he described the ongoing situation in Gaza — territory controlled by Palestinian militant group Hamas that is being bombed by Israel in the aftermath of Hamas’s 7 October strike on the nation — as something he has “never witnessed before”.
“This is much worse. The intensity of bombings and targeting of residential buildings, the killings and neighbourhoods being wiped. As many as 40 per cent of the wounded are children,” said Abu-Sitta, adding that these included toddlers, infants and teenagers.
Overwhelmed and strained, he said, doctors were performing surgeries through the day — for almost 18 hours — at the hospital due to consecutive bombings.
The doctor recounted the explosion at the nearby Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, to which he had moved on 17 October to attend to the wounded.
The hospital suffered a deadly blast that day, which reportedly killed more than 500 people on the premises, comprising the wounded, those seeking shelter, patients, children and healthcare staff.
Abu-Sitta said he had decided to sleep at Al-Ahli hospital as he was operating late into the night. As he moved to attend to a patient, he said he heard “the loud screeching noise of a missile and a huge explosion”.
“When I stepped out of the operation theatre, I could see the courtyard and ambulances on fire, and the courtyard was full of bodies. The emergency room was full of the dead and wounded. I was treating a wounded patient whose thigh had to be amputated and had to escort another patient who had shrapnel in his neck,” Abu-Sitta told ThePrint.
As he carried his patient on a stretcher through the courtyard, the doctor saw it littered with the bodies of those who had come to seek refuge at the hospital, believing it was a safe haven during war.
While Israel has denied responsibility for the bombing of the hospital, claiming the blast was the result of a failed rocket launched by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, Abu-Sitta said he was certain that the former was responsible for the attack.
Who will ever wash away all this blood pic.twitter.com/nkPZUm6Cex
— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) October 16, 2023
He told ThePrint that for many days, the “Israeli army and government had been planning to attack Palestinian hospitals and phone calling them with threats of attacks”.
“I do not understand why there is confusion when it (bombing) does happen. It is they who have been planning to attack for the past few days,” he asserted.
At Gaza’s largest hospital, Abu-Sitta further said, doctors were running out of medication, supplies, dressings and water due to a blockade initiated by Israel.
Earlier in the day, the war surgeon took to social media to show that the doctors were now using “vinegar from the corner shop to treat pseudomonas bacterial wound infections”.
Vinegar from the corner shop to treat pseuodomonas bacterial wound infections. Its come to that. pic.twitter.com/mEE4haHMyj
— Ghassan Abu Sitta (@GhassanAbuSitt1) October 19, 2023
He also told ThePrint that “24 doctors and 14 nurses from hospitals across Gaza” had been killed in the bombings. “Many of my colleagues have lost their family members and their homes,” Abu-Sitta said.
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‘Brutish harassment aimed to silence’
This week, Abu-Sitta had voiced another concern on social media — stating that the “British counter terrorism police” had shown up at his house in the United Kingdom “and harassed my family”.
The reason, he told ThePrint, was that the “war machine” wanted to silence him and his anti-war narrative.
“They asked my wife about when I had gone to Gaza, which charity I worked for and who paid for my travel ticket. It was just brutish harassment that was aimed at sending a message to me that I should not be vocal. At the end of the day, our duty as doctors is to advocate for our patients and to bear witness to what is happening to these people,” said Abu-Sitta, who also runs a clinic in London.
With despair in his voice, the doctor noted that “around 7,50,000 people in Gaza no longer live in their own homes, and now live in shelters, hospital courtyards or their relatives’ houses”.
This scale of displacement in Gaza, he added, was something that was never seen before.
As he geared up to head back to his patients, the war surgeon summed up the existing situation as “nothing short of a carnage against unarmed civilians”, adding that the latter were being “ethnically cleansed”.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)
Also Read: ‘Only one committing war crimes…Israel. We will stay put,’ says Gaza-based human rights lawyer