Ex-NHS doctor stuck in Gaza during hospital placement says family are ‘terrified’ but he ‘has to keep going’
The European Hospital, in southern Gaza, is a dangerous place to be.
The facility is the only remaining hospital east of the city of Rafah and an Israeli military operation has come perilously close to its doors.
It was a hazardous time then, for three British medics to begin a short placement, arriving at the hospital just a few days before the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) began its campaign.
Now they are unable to leave.
A patient is treated at the European Hospital. Pic: Fajr Scientific
We managed to speak to one of these doctors – an orthopaedic and peripheral nerve surgeon from London called Mohammed Tahir.
He volunteered with a non-profit medical charity called Fajr Scientific and I asked him to describe what he has been seeing.
“In the last few days, with the intensifying of the bombing in Rafah, we are getting many blast injuries here,” he said.
“People literally, their limbs and their bodies torn to shreds. Children with mutilated faces, kids whose limbs we’ve had to amputate because of the complexity of the injuries.”
Gaza latest: Israel’s use of weapons provided by US likely violated international law – report
Pic: Fajr Scientific
“When did you arrive? What date did you enter Gaza?” I asked.
“I’ll be honest with you. I mean, right now, night, day, (the) days of the week have all evaporated.
“I work from morning until night, every day. Sometimes I finish at 4am, so I’ve lost track of time. I can’t even remember what day (it is). It was circa around one and a half weeks ago.”
He accepts that he was taking a risk by travelling to Gaza when he did.
Pic: Fajr Scientific
“Before coming here, I was warned by several friends, do not go now, because the Rafah invasion is imminent, and you are going over a very dangerous time,” he said.
“But I was anxious, a little bit scared to come, but then I thought if not me, then who?”
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Dr Tahir has dealt with anxiety – but has had to grapple with personal distress.
This is the first time he has worked in a war zone and the nature and intensity of the work has been overwhelming.
The surgeon says he has dealt with 150 cases in the past 10 days.
Pic: Fajr Scientific
“(There was) an airstrike, the parents were killed, there were two small children, one of whom we tried to resuscitate, but he was covered in burns from head to toe and we called it, he died,” he said.
“His sister by the side was also covered in wounds, massive wounds to our forehead. Her skull was exposed and she had a skull fracture too.
“And I’m there looking at these two children wondering: ‘What did they do?’.”
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Israel Rafah incursion explained
The staff at the European Hospital do their best to keep people alive – but their workplace has also become a refuge.
“This is a refugee camp,” said Dr Tahir.
“It is a hospital within a refugee camp. You have people, children and women sleeping on floors, in corridors, on stairs, even with makeshift tents inside, tents outside too.”
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There is a perception that the presence of foreign medical doctors offers a measure of security.
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“There are a lot of families here looking for shelter because they know outside of the perimeter of this hospital they can be killed,” he said.
“When they see us as people from foreign (medical) missions, they feel that we are, in effect, human shields for them against Israeli airstrikes because we are their protection.
“And when they hear that we have to be evacuated or that there is a whisper (of that), the entire population in the hospital are gripped with fear and panic that they are about to die.”
When I put it to the surgeon that the Israelis have described their operation in southern Gaza as a limited, counter-terrorism operation, he took 4 or 5 seconds to respond.
“What I see on the floor in real life is very different to that.”
People have taken refuge at the hospital
Tents have been set up on the grounds of the facility
One thing Dr Tahir cannot do is leave.
When the IDF captured the Gaza side of the Rafah Crossing on the first day of their operation, they shut down the main humanitarian route in and out of the territory.
I asked the surgeon how he felt about it.
“I feel for my family, not for myself. I know that they are terrified,” he said.
“I know that my friends and family are really concerned for my wellbeing.
“And I think it hurts them more than it hurts me… but the intensity of the feeling that I have because of the tragedies that I am seeing, because of the suffering I’m seeing it.
“I just feel like it cannot stop. I have to keep going and going and going. There is no time to rest, there is no time to sleep. I don’t have that luxury right now.”
Israel’s defence minister has threatened to “take whatever measures necessary” to stop an aid boat carrying Greta Thunberg from reaching Gaza.
The climate campaigner, 22, is one of a dozen activists aboard the Madleen, which set sail from Sicily last Sunday on a mission aiming to break Israel‘s sea blockade.
The activists have said they plan to reach Gaza‘s territorial waters as early as Sunday to deliver humanitarian aid.
But in a post on X, Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz said he has instructed the IDF to prevent the vessel reaching shore and to “take whatever measures necessary”.
Addressing Thunberg and the other activists, he said: “You should turn back – because you will not reach Gaza.”
He wrote: “I have instructed the IDF to act so that the “Madeleine” hate flotilla does not reach the shores of Gaza – and to take any means necessary to that end.
“To the anti-Semitic Greta and her fellow Hamas propaganda spokespeople, I say clearly: You should turn back – because you will not reach Gaza.
“Israel will act against any attempt to break the blockade or assist terrorist organizations – at sea, in the air and on land.”
Latest known position of the vessel
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Why is Greta sailing to Gaza?
Rima Hassan, a French member of the European Parliament, who is of Palestinian descent, is also on the boat, which is operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition.
She has been barred from entering Israel because of her opposition to Israel’s policies towards Palestinians.
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Israel started allowing some basic aid into Gaza last month after a three-month total blockade aimed at pressuring Hamas and preventing the group from importing arms.
But humanitarian workers have warned of famine unless there is an end to the blockade and the 20-month war, which was ignited by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 Oct 2023.
An attempt last month by Freedom Flotilla to reach Gaza by sea failed after another of the group’s vessels was attacked by two drones while sailing in international waters off Malta.
The group blamed Israel for the attack, which damaged the front section of the ship.
A British surgeon has told Sky News she has never treated or seen anyone in a Gaza hospital in military uniform – and the only people she has seen with weapons are the IDF.
Dr Victoria Rose, a NHS plastic surgeon who has experience working in Gaza, said conditions there are now the worst they’ve ever been.
“There’s been a real escalation in the bombing campaign,” she told Sunday Morning with Trevor Phillips.
“The population is on their knees.”
Dr Victoria Rose in Gaza
Hospitals in Gaza have frequently come under Israeli military (IDF) fire – and sometimes find themselves besieged – in the ongoing war following Hamas’s October 2023 attacks on Israel.
Medical facilities are usually protected during conflicts under international law, but Israel has repeatedly claimed that Hamas uses them for command centres.
Asked about Israel’s allegations, Dr Rose said: “I’ve never treated or seen anyone – in any of the hospitals that I’ve worked in – in military uniform or with a weapon.
“The only people I’ve ever seen in Gaza with military uniforms and weapons are the IDF.”
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Palestinians ‘shot while getting food’
Dr Rose told Sky News about the impact of the war on hospital staff: “Lots of my Palestinian colleagues were telling me that they would rather die than carry on with this war.”
It comes as a controversial humanitarian organisation backed by Israel and the US said it did not distribute any food in Gaza on Saturday, accusing Hamas of making threats that “made it impossible” to operate. Hamas denied the claims.
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UN: 500,000 are food insecure in Gaza
The Israeli blockade on aid going into Gaza has severely affected the population, she said, leaving them malnourished and without the nutrients they need.
Speaking about her last visit to a hospital in the enclave, she said: “Infection rates were soaring… We were seeing a lot of avoidable deaths, a lot of small children dying from sepsis that would have been prevented if they’d been in in the Western world.”
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Despite a limited lifting of the blockade by Israel – the head of the UN called it a “teaspoon” – the aid situation in Gaza remains dire.
The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), which is endorsed by Israel and the US, took over responsibility for distributing aid in Gaza, but has been criticised for lack of experience, organisation and faces allegations of assisting in ethnic cleansing by luring Palestinians to the south of the enclave if they want food.
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Why is Greta sailing to Gaza?
The Hamas-run Gaza government media office said on Saturday the GHF operation has “utterly failed on all levels” and that Hamas was ready to help secure aid deliveries by a separate long-running UN-led humanitarian operation.
A Hamas source told Reuters the group’s armed wing would deploy snipers on Sunday to prevent armed gangs looting food shipments.
World
Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe Turbay in ‘critical condition’ after attempted assassination – as 15-year-old suspect arrested
A 15 year-old-boy has been arrested after a Colombian senator running to be the country’s next president was shot and “critically” injured at a campaign rally in Bogota, authorities have said.
Senator Miguel Uribe Turbay, 39, was targeted during the campaign event in a park in the Fontibon area of the Colombian capital, according to the Attorney General’s office.
He suffered two gunshot wounds when armed assailants shot him from behind and appeared to be bleeding from his head as he was helped by aides and people in the crowd, in a video posted on social media.
According to a medical report at the Santa Fe Foundation hospital, he was admitted there in a “critical condition” and is still undergoing a “neurosurgical and peripheral vascular procedure”.
Opposition senator Miguel Uribe Turbay on 13 May. Pic: AP
His wife Maria Claudia Tarazone wrote on X that he is “fighting for his life” and urged Colombians to pray for him.
Two other people were injured but the nature of their injuries has not been made public.
A suspect, a 15-year-old boy, was arrested at the scene with a firearm and is being treated for a leg injury, police chief General Carlos Triana said.
The government is offering a $730,000 (£540,000) reward for information and President Gustavo Petro said the investigation will focus on who ordered the attack.
“For now there is nothing more than hypothesis,” he said, adding that failures in security protocols would also be looked into.
People gather outside the hospital where Mr Uribe Turbay is ‘fighting for his life’. Pic: Reuters
Mr Uribe Turbay, who announced his presidential bid for the right-wing Democratic Center Party in March, was accompanied by a team of 21 people at the time of the shooting, his office said, including councilman Andres Barrios.
He was hoping to run in the presidential elections taking place on 31 May next year – and succeed Mr Petro, the country’s first leftist leader.
His mother, who was a journalist, was kidnapped and killed in 1991 during one of the most violent periods in Colombia’s history.
Forensic investigators at the scene of Mr Uribe Turbay’s shooting in Bogota. Pic: AP
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His party described it as an “unacceptable act of violence”, while US secretary of state Marco Rubio condemned it in the “strongest possible terms”.
Writing on X, Mr Rubio also urged Colombia’s current president to “dial back the inflammatory rhetoric and protect Colombian officials”.
Police outside the hospital where Mr Uribe Turbay is being treated. Pic: AP
Former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe, who is not related to Mr Uribe Turbay, said the gunman had “attacked the hope of the country, a great husband, son, brother, and a great colleague”.
He cancelled a planned trip to France due to the “seriousness of the events”, his office said in a statement.
Messages of support poured in from elsewhere in Latin America, with Chilean President Gabriel Boric saying: “There is no room or justification for violence in a democracy.”
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa added: “We condemn all forms of violence and intolerance.”
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