‘There was just wave after wave’: Gaza doctors recount horror of the last week
About a third of all casualties admitted to Nasser hospital were under 14, as
Israeli airstrikes broke fragile ceasefire
Jason Burke in Jerusalem
Sun 23 Mar 2025
Early on Tuesday morning, within minutes of the wave of Israeli airstrikes that
broke the fragile two-month ceasefire which had brought some respite to Gaza,
the emergency room of al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-
Balah was full.
“At no point were there less than 65 people in ER, all with open wounds, mainly
women and children … The floor was awash with blood,” said Mark Perlmutter, a
US-based volunteer orthopaedic surgeon working at the hospital that morning.
Just a few kilometres away, there were similar scenes at Nasser hospital in the
southern city of Khan Younis.
“There was just wave after wave,” said Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive
care doctor. “As soon as patients had died or been sent elsewhere and we
cleared some space, more would come in. It was chaos. One doctor stepped on
a corpse on the ground as he tried to do a life-saving procedure on a child.”
Palestinian medical officials say more than 200 people were killed on Tuesday
morning alone across Gaza, and hundreds more injured. Within five days, as
more airstrikes and shelling continued, the overall death toll in the devastated
Palestinian territory in the 18-month war would reach 50,000, comprising
mostly women and children. A total of 113,274 others had been injured, the
health ministry said.
Israeli military officials say 80 “terrorist” targets in 10 minutes were attacked on
Tuesday morning, including leaders and key military infrastructure.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) has previously blamed high levels of civilian
casualties on Hamas, the militant Islamist organisation that launched the attack
into Israel in October 2023 that killed 1,200, mostly civilians, and triggered the
war. Israel accuses Hamas of using civilians as human shields, a charge it
denies.
At Nasser hospital, more than half of adult casualties brought in on Tuesday
night were given a 20-second check by surgeons – then, in an effort to
prioritise those whose lives might be saved, whoever had brought them was
told there was nothing that could be done. Children were almost all admitted,
even when their injuries were clearly fatal.
A doctor and two men surround a hospital bed
View image in fullscreen
Some of the people injured in the Israeli army attack were brought to Indonesia
hospital for treatment in Beit Lahiya, Gaza, on Saturday. Photograph:
Anadolu/Getty Images
“They had been sleeping so were coming in wearing pyjamas, wrapped in
blankets. Often it was neighbours bringing them because the parents had been
killed. It was horrific. We had to stop resuscitating several kids simply to focus
on one who had a chance,” said Haj-Hassan.
Feroze Sidhwa , a 43-year-old trauma surgeon from California, in Khan Younis
as a volunteer with the medical charity MedGlobal, described telling the father
of one four-year-old girl that his daughter was not going to live more than a few
more minutes. “I had a look … She had very serious head injuries … I told her
dad to take her outside and be with her and pray with her and he did,” Sidhwa
told the Guardian.
Many of the 300 brought into Nasser hospital on Tuesday did not survive.
Ahmed al-Farra, head of the paediatric and obstetrics department, said about
85 people died, including about 40 children aged one to 17.
The average age of the children pronounced dead at Nasser hospital after this
week’s new wave of attacks was between six and eight years old and about
35% of all casualties were under 14, said Morgan McMonagle, an Irish vascular
surgeon volunteering with the NGO Medical Aid for Palestine.
Among the casualties was a 10-year-old boy with a severed spinal chord who
was completely paralysed from the neck down and who was unable to breath
unassisted, and a five-year-old with multiple shrapnel injuries including to her
brain who was unlikely to speak again.
In a statement, the IDF said it was committed to mitigating civilian harm during
operational activity and made great efforts to estimate and consider potential
“civilian collateral damage” in its strikes.
“The IDF is fully committed to respecting all applicable international legal
obligations, including the law of armed conflict. Considerations and obligations
with respect to proportionality and military advantage are evaluated and
applied on a case-by-case basis and are facilitated by the comprehensive
integration of the law of armed conflict into every phase of training, planning,
and execution of military operations,” the statement said.
A woman tries to comfort an injured man, as a child watches them at the
Indonesia hospital in Bait Lahia in Gaza on 22 March 22, 2025
View image in fullscreen
A woman tries to comfort an injured man as a child watches them at the
Indonesia hospital. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Israeli political leaders have warned that attacks will intensify until Hamas frees
more hostages and gives up control of Gaza. Hamas took 251 hostages in its
October 2023 raid into Israel and continues to hold 59. Returning hostages
have reported systematic abuse and poor conditions in captivity.
The first six-week phase of the ceasefire agreed in January expired in early
March. Israel proposed an extension of 30 to 60 days and further hostage-for-
prisoner exchanges instead of an agreed second phase that would have led to
a permanent end to hostilities.
Only 22 of 35 major health facilities in Gaza are still functioning, each only
providing a fraction of the services offered before the war. Thirteen are
currently receiving casualties from the ongoing airstrikes.
Olga Cherevko, a spokesperson in Gaza for the UN’s office for the coordination
of humanitarian affairs, said that all were “overwhelmed” and suffering
shortages of essential supplies even though stocks were brought into the
territory during the eight-week ceasefire.
“It’s hard to measure the exact level of supplies … [but] we have never had such
a long closure. Literally zero has come in,” she said.
Doctors at al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital said stocks were running low. “It was very
difficult emotionally, even after 18 months of conflict. We only have ten beds,
and we are short of so much: gauze for burns, gloves, cleansing materials,
dressings,” one surgeon, who requested anonymity, said.
Dr Khamis Elessi, a neurologist and pain specialist at al-Ahli hospital in Gaza
City, said he had no painkillers of sufficient strength for hundreds of cancer
patients. “We have hundreds of thousands in Gaza with chronic diseases. They
need the right care but conditions are terrible. There is no safe water, sanitation
systems are all destroyed so infections are spreading everywhere and people
are terrified,” Elessi said.
A child mourns beside the bodies of relatives, who lost their lives in Israeli
attacks on northern Gaza, at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahia on 19 March
19, 2025
View image in fullscreen
A child mourns beside the bodies of relatives, who lost their lives in Israeli
attacks on northern Gaza, at the Indonesian hospital in Beit Lahiya on
Wednesday. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
Israel continued to allow medical evacuations from Gaza but only a few dozen
left daily and more than 14,000 needed urgent treatment outside Gaza,
Cherevko said.
Most facilities in Gaza now also have well-practised routines for mass casualty
incidents, though even these proved inadequate last week. “We have plans,
good plans, but the problem is that the number [of casualties] is greater even
than our plans,” said Dr Fahd Haddad, medical director of a field hospital near
the southern town of Nuseirat.
Haddad said his facility too was short of supplies. “We are afraid we will run out.
If there is a long term closure then we cannot survive,” he told the Guardian.
But the biggest challenge the 38-year-old and his colleagues face is
maintaining their own morale after hopes of a permanent ceasefire were
shattered. “We woke up that Tuesday to the explosions and it was like a
flashback to 18 months ago when the war began,” Haddad said. “We were so
happy with the ceasefire. Life was very tough but at least there was no killing.”
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