Drone victims, terror and death: 30 minutes inside a Gaza hospital

Speaking from the war-shattered enclave amid the ongoing Israeli military push to take full control of Gaza City, UNICEF spokesperson James Elder described one short visit to a hospital where youngsters were either suffering or dying everywhere he looked.

As we’re talking to the surgeon there, she dies on the bed in front of us

One victim at Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, was six-year-old Aya, injured by an airstrike. “I’m really noticing not just the wound, but the attention that the bobs in her hair, the care that a parent’s given before the airstrike,” he said. “As we’re talking to the surgeon there, she dies on the bed in front of us. That’s 30 minutes in a hospital.” 

No space to move

At the same hospital, Mr. Elder reported seeing three children “all shot by quadcopters” – an attack drone with four propellers – amid continuing reports that people continue to be injured while seeking aid from controversial non-UN relief distribution hubs run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

“It’s a war zone, children on the floor, there’s a boy who’d been shot at GHF who was bleeding out on the floor” with others wounded by shooting, shrapnel or burns.

The UNICEF spokesperson underscored reports that 1,000 infants have been killed in the last two years in Gaza since Hamas-led terror attacks in Israel triggered the war. “We have no idea how many more have died from preventable illnesses,” he continued.

With only around 14 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals still open and partially functional after almost two years of war, they are often “absolutely packed” with people needing help, Mr. Elder stressed.

Rescued, terrified

“I turn around and there’s a little girl, Sham, who has just been pulled from the rubble; so, she’s covered in that dust and smoke with that terrified expression on her face, being held by an aunt or an uncle… Now Sham didn’t have any broken bones nor internal injury, [she] was not told though, that her mother and her sister were both killed in that attack.”

Turning to Gaza City, the veteran UN aid worker stressed that many thousands of people remain there unable to leave, amid continuing Israeli evacuation orders airstrikes that have left children “shuddering” and gazing skywards “to track the fire” from helicopters and quadcopters.

“You’ve got shoeless children who push grandparents around the rubble, amputee children are struggling through the dust, mothers are carrying exhausted children – literally their skin is bleeding because of the severity of rashes,” Mr. Elder continued, before warning about “continued indiscriminate attacks in densely populated civilian areas despite official statements”.

Another aid worker killed

On Thursday, the NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) confirmed the killing in Gaza of its fourteenth medical worker, occupational therapist Omar Hayek, in an attack that also injured four of his colleagues in Deir Al-Balah.

Until 13 September he had worked at an MSF clinic in Gaza City before finally evacuating amid “relentless attacks and forced displacement from Israeli forces”, the NGO maintained.

“People are scared and rightly so…“If you ask me now, can we do our work? I say no, of course we cannot do our work in the north,” said Dr Rik Peeperkorn, UN World Health Organization (WHO) Representative in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The level of violence in Gaza is such that nowhere is safe, including field hospitals, which offer no protection from stray bullets, said Christian Cardon from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

“We had several occasions of people being injured, brought to the hospital and while they were being treated, were wounded again because of stray bullets coming in the hospital,” he said, noting another such incident on Thursday.