“We dread nightfall”: Voices from Gaza

Chaos soon ensued at the hospital. Our team ran to the emergency room to receive those in need of medical care. One of the patients, a 3-year-old, was injured. Her parents were standing right next to her, worried, as she looked directly at me. She was breathing, so she must be okay, I thought. But as I took her bandage off, I realized her entire left thigh was peeled down to the bone..."

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... In my experience, I have never seen a mass casualty event like today [Saturday]. Every corner in the hospital was busy. Every space was occupied by the injured or bodies of the dead. The medical staff were working very hard to save lives. Some patients passed away, unfortunately, because of the type of difficult injuries they had. Both the intensive care unit and the operation theater rooms were [fully] occupied.

Our anesthesiologist went to support the emergency room, and he discovered that his family were among the injured. He lost his nephew, and his daughters were injured. So even our medical staff, while they were working and trying to save patients, were receiving news that their families were among the injured or dead.”

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I stood up to see if my son had come back and I realized he had left his phone at home. I went to the street screaming, ‘Where is my son? Where is my son?’ My family tried to get me back into the house. I screamed so much that I lost my voice.

One hour later, my son arrived home. The sight of fear and terror on his face… I have never seen this on a human being. He was barely able to speak. He said, ‘Dad, people have been blown into pieces! Children, women … why is it like this, Dad?’

I hugged him and cried and cried. For the first time, I felt weak. 

After that, I went to Al-Awda clinic in Deir al-Balah, which is only a few meters away from my home. I saw dozens and dozens of people lying on the ground. Some of them were dead, others injured. One ambulance arrived carrying three people who had been killed and four others who were wounded. My eyes were full of tears.
One of my colleagues called me. His brother had been hit by shrapnel in the back. He told me he was throwing up blood. He kept asking what he should do. But what could I do? There was no ambulance available. I told him to tie a piece of cloth around the wound to pressure the injury, and to pray for him that he stays alive.

Dozens of people were killed. We did not have time to bury them.

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... We don’t have any clean water, there’s no drinkable water. We don’t have electricity and we cannot get medicines.

My mother suffers from high blood pressure and diabetes, and I cannot get medication for her. A lot of people in Gaza are suffering from respiratory problems because of the smoke and dust from the bombings. Communicable diseases are also spreading quickly."

Listen to Suhail's message >

... There is a lack of access to food, lack of access to water, lack of access to sanitation, lack of access to health care. There is a huge need for primary health care, for follow-up of patients who had surgeries, multiple surgeries. There are people with infected wounds.

We do see people start to move, taking the little belongings they have left to try to get to a safer place. They don't know what to do anymore and they feel unsafe and terrified about what is going to happen next. 

'Where is it safe?'

'Where should we go?'

And there is no answer to that. And it really leads to a feeling of despair. 

It's quite sad to see how empty people's eyes are despite all the resilience that people have here."

... One of MSF’s surgeons told me about dressing the wounds of babies who had lost their legs. It stayed with him. Babies who never learned to walk, and never will.

Some of those children have a new acronym written on their file: “WCNSF,” which stands for “wounded child, no surviving family.” 

Nine-year-old Salma* is one of thousands of WCNSFs. She suffered a fractured skull when the house her family was in was shelled. One of her legs was broken; the other had been amputated. We met her in the intensive care unit. She still didn’t know that she was the only one who made it out of the rubble alive. The exhausted staff wanted to let her recover physically first.   

One of the biggest challenges facing hospitals in southern and central Gaza is bed capacity. The beds are needed to treat patients in critical condition, but those who have been stabilized have nowhere to go. Where should we send a patient like Salma? What do we say to her?"

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... It’s impossible to safely provide the medical aid people desperately need in conditions like these. Hospitals and health care workers should never be a target.

As people have been forced to flee location after location in search of safety in Gaza, many have been left without shelter and are living in terrible conditions. Rafah, the southernmost city in the Strip, is now home to at least 1.2 million people, up from a pre-war population of 300,000. Tents improvised from plastic sheeting line the streets, and the schools are crammed full of people looking for a safe place to sleep. Because there is little or no gas, the land is being stripped of its greenery to feed fires to keep people warm against the winter cold. Clean water and toilets are in short supply, diseases are spreading rapidly due to the crowded conditions and lack of health care services, and food prices have risen to six or seven times their pre-war norm."

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.... On November 18, 2023, a Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) evacuation convoy came under fire in Gaza City in what immediately appeared to be a deliberate attack against clearly identified MSF vehicles. Two people were killed—both family members of MSF staff—including one who was a volunteer supporting MSF medical teams at Al-Shifa Hospital.

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... You work 24 hours, but the number of patients is so high you cannot keep up. Though, we keep going. Thousands of people are sheltering at Al-Shifa. People who evacuated from the north or lost their homes in airstrikes flocked to the hospital to try and seek safety. There are people everywhere—no hygiene, no water to drink, no food. They lost their homes. They haven’t been able to bathe for 24 days. It's a health catastrophe.

I come back to the office in the evening to see my kids. I calm them down when they hear the bombing—especially at night. Some days I go to Al-Shifa without sleep after staying up all night calming them down. It's difficult. There are no words to express my feelings."

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... The base is a sort of large complex which serves as a school, among other things, with perhaps 10 buildings of various sizes. And so people are looking for a small place to shelter where they can. People are sleeping on the stairs, in the hallways, the classrooms, the cafeterias. There are people really everywhere, putting their mattresses or just a blanket on the ground. 

People come from almost everywhere, especially from the areas which have been evacuated—from Gaza City, from Beit Hanoun, from Khan Yunis. People think that they are safer here.  

People came here to seek safety, but they are still afraid. They wonder what will happen. People often come to us asking if we have information, but we don't have any either. We don't know if [the] bombing will continue close by or far from here. We heard a few bombs falling yesterday, but for sure less than in Gaza City."

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