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Doctors are a very special category of people. Doctors who opt to work in war zones are an entirely different level of special.

They take their skills and medical experience into the most dangerous of environments, knowing they risk their own lives in their mission to save others. Yet they do this regardless.

Warning: This article contains details and images that some readers may find distressing.

Dr Tom Potokar performing surgery in Gaza, sent to Sky's Alex Crawford
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Dr Tom Potokar performing surgery in Gaza

The British doctors who we came to know and immensely respect at the centre of our report, Gaza: Doctors on the Frontline, don’t see themselves as heroes or even remarkable for what they’ve done over the past few weeks in Gaza.

That, of course, is what makes them even more remarkable.

“This shouldn’t be about us,” Dr Tom Potokar scolded us more than once.

“This should be about what’s happening to the Palestinians and health workers inside Gaza.”

But like it or not, the daily video blogs the travelling doctors did about their experiences on the ground in Gaza resonated with viewers.

Dr Tom Potokar performing surgery in Gaza, filmed for Sky's Alex Crawford

They sent us searing accounts of their daily lives while in Gaza. They told us of having to stitch together mostly young broken bodies, torn apart by repeated Israeli bombs.

They talked of having to perform amputations on the young, of trying to stem the pain and infections on badly burned bomb victims and of the lack of common medicines.

They fumed at what they saw as political ‘complicity’ from the international community for not doing enough to end the war. They begged for aid to be allowed in.

They spoke from the heart as humanitarians and doctors but also witnesses – and we saw them tired, frustrated, angry at times, maybe a little anxious, certainly emotional.

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British surgeon records video diary from Gaza

And yet, all the time they realised how they were just visitors in Gaza while their patients, their medical co-workers and their colleagues’ families were all living this permanently, with no escape while just trying to survive. Many do not.

“What do you say to a seven-year-old who’s lost both her legs,” Dr Tom says in one heart-wrenching vlog.

“Most of my patients are children,” Dr Victoria Rose tells us in another. We see her fall in love with a badly burned toddler, so swathed in bandages, only his face was uncovered.

“This is my favourite little guy,” she says in her vlog about three-year-old Haitum, “he has 35% burns”.

Haitum, a three-year-old Palestinian being treated by Dr Victoria Rose
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Haitum, a three-year-old Palestinian being treated by Dr Victoria Rose

“That’s a lot for a little guy,” she goes on. And the tens of thousands who watched her updates on social media platforms fell in love with the little boy too.

Viewers see how Haitum was far from an exceptional case too. “My first three patients today were under 12,” we learn from Dr Victoria in another post.

Read more from Dr Victoria Rose: ‘I felt I had to go back to help’

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Inside Gaza hospital after shooting

The two surgeons were in small teams sent into the battlefield courtesy of the IDEALS charity, which funded their trip.

Their limited time in the Gaza Strip turned out to be of an intensity which both recognised as unmatched before by either of them.

They witnessed alongside their patients and fellow medics, daily and nightly bombings; gunfire; dwindling medical supplies and saw the dire lack of food.

They treated tiny skeletal bodies desperate for sustenance – and helped mass evacuations of badly wounded patients from the fast-disappearing health facilities.

A severely malnourished child in Gaza
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A severely malnourished child in Gaza

‘No one is safe’

“There just seems to be indiscriminate bombing,” Dr Victoria says of the Israeli bombardment. “No one is safe – whether you’re a woman, man, child or health worker.

“But there seems to be a systematic pattern of attacking infrastructure, particularly around health provision.”

She goes on to cite how she’s observed the Israeli attacks focus on taking out the hospital water supplies, then the power source, as well as declaring red zones or implementing evacuation orders around health facilities to make it difficult for patients to access the hospital and for staff to travel into work.

The Israeli authorities have an alternative narrative – the Israeli Defence Forces claim they are carrying out “precision strikes”, insist Hamas is using patients as human shields and say they’ve uncovered vast military command centres beneath hospitals – including the European Gaza.

Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble in the Israeli strikes
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Much of Gaza has been reduced to rubble by Israeli strikes

Conflicting accounts

The doctors – equally insistently – say they’ve seen no arms in the hospitals and have seen no evidence of Hamas command centres or tunnels beneath.

Dr Tom rang me while our team was on assignment in Somalia. “You won’t have heard but the European Gaza Hospital has been bombed,” he said, “I’ll send you the videos”.

He shuns social media and has no accounts, but he’s a veteran who’s been travelling to Gaza for the past seven years, and he knew very well the importance of what he was witnessing on the ground and living through.

He’s extremely experienced and has travelled across the globe working in war zones like Cambodia and Lebanon, and is a former chief surgeon for the International Red Cross.

He’s also a burns specialist with his own international charity called Interburns. “If Cambodia was the killing fields, Gaza is the slaughterhouse,” he says about his most recent time inside Gaza.

Dr Tom Potokar in Gaza, speaking to Sky's Alex Crawford
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Dr Tom Potokar

Dr Victoria Rose is an NHS plastic surgeon based in London and was on her third trip to Gaza. She talks frankly of being motivated to go after helping to mentor Gaza surgeons who’d travelled to Britain to learn extra skills some years ago.

“We saw them struggling in Gaza and I felt I just had to help,” she explains. She videoed everything – unstintingly – and has her own Instagram handle @rosieplasticsurgeon.

She teases Dr Tom – on camera of course – about his lack of digital awareness. “This is the man who calls it Facetube, aren’t you Tom?”

The two have very different approaches but mutual respect. And both realised their job in Gaza was twofold. They had to bear witness. They had to report.

Dr Victoria Rose in Gaza, speaking to Sky's Alex Crawford
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Dr Victoria Rose

Running past huge craters

They had to provide insight into what fellow Palestinian medics are up against in Gaza; how hospitals – protected under international law – are being affected, and how ordinary Gazan civilians are suffering.

So, Dr Tom took us into the heart of the European Gaza Hospital minutes after Israeli forces dropped multiple bombs around the complex.

We saw him racing through the car park outside the Emergency Department and past huge craters and rubble.

He delivered commentary as he ran through the smoke-filled corridors to try to find his anaesthetist. He showed us the repeated bombings a day later – and the scramble to get injured patients out to safety.

The two surgeons may be very different people. But both are highly regarded in their fields and have been brought together by a burning desire to help the wounded and injured in Gaza as well as their fellow medics on the frontline.

Medics treat patients in Gaza

They also both entered Gaza with the knowledge that foreign journalists are barred from the territory – and many of those inside have been killed or maimed – so it fell to them, the doctors, to be the witnesses during their stay in Gaza and beyond.

“It’s really not something I’m comfortable with,” Dr Tom said. “For a start, it takes up a lot of time! But it’s important people see what’s going on here.

“The question people should be asking is, why are foreign journalists being barred? What is it the Israelis do not want people to see?”

Analysis: Jonathan Levy – Israel’s block on international journalists in Gaza should not be allowed to stand

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Dr Victoria texted a lot about her fears that Nasser Hospital, where the two travelling teams finally end up, may face the same fate as the European Gaza – evacuated and now out of action.

“We’ve got to keep on reminding people what’s going on here because Nasser is the last functioning hospital in the south, and if it has to be evacuated, it will have tragic consequences for the civilians here. Hundreds will die,” she says.

The film is a graphic, often painful watch of human endurance, tragedy, pain and survival – told through the eyes of two exceptional and inspiring surgeons who felt their duty as doctors also meant they should lay bare what’s happening inside the Gaza Strip – and what is still happening – while the world’s focus has shifted elsewhere.

Gaza: Doctors On The Frontline will air on Sky News at 9pm on 19 June

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Contact with two hostages ‘lost’ during Israeli operations in Gaza, Hamas’s armed group says

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Contact with two hostages 'lost' during Israeli operations in Gaza, Hamas's armed group says

Hamas’s armed group has claimed it has lost contact with two hostages as a result of Israel’s operations in Gaza – after it called on air deployments to be stopped for 24 hours.

In a statement, Hamas’s armed al-Qassam Brigades said it had demanded that Israel halt air sorties for 24 hours, starting at 6pm, in part of Gaza City, to remove the hostages from danger.

It comes a day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is due to meet US President Donald Trump and as the number of those killed in Gaza surpasses the 66,000 mark, according to the enclave’s Hamas-run health ministry.

Its figure does not differentiate between civilians and fighters.

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Volunteer nurse’s video diary of Gaza horrors

A total of 48 hostages are still being held captive by Hamas, the militant group which rules Gaza, with about 20 believed by Israel to still be alive. A total of 251 hostages were taken on 7 October 2023, when Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel which killed 1,200 people.

Situation on the ground

In Gaza, a war-torn enclave where famine has been declared in some areas and where Israel has been accused of committing acts of genocide – which it has repeatedly denied – the almost two-year war raged on.

On Sunday, the number of those killed rose to at least 21 as five people were killed in an airstrike in the Al Naser area, local health authorities said, while medics reported 16 more deaths in strikes on houses in central Gaza.

The Civil Emergency Service in Gaza said late on Saturday that Israel had denied 73 requests, sent via international
organisations, to rescue injured Palestinians in Gaza City.

Israeli authorities had no immediate comment. The military earlier said forces were expanding operations in the city and
that five militants firing an anti-tank missile towards Israeli troops had been killed by the Israeli air force.

Read more:
Volunteer nurse’s video diary of Gaza horrors
Blair being lined up to lead temporary Gaza administration – reports

‘We will get it done’

In Monday’s White House meeting, President Trump is expected to share a new 21-point proposal for an immediate ceasefire.

His proposal would include the release of all hostages within 48 hours and a gradual withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Palestinian enclave, according to three Arab officials briefed on the plan, the PA news agency reports.

A Hamas official said the group was briefed on the plan but has yet to receive an official offer from Egyptian and Qatari mediators. Hamas has said it is ready to “study any proposals positively and responsibly”.

Mr Trump, who has been one of Israel’s greatest allies, said on Sunday there is “a real chance for greatness in the Middle East”.

It is unclear, however, what Mr Trump was specifically referring to.

He said in a Truth Social post: “We have a real chance for Greatness in the Middle East. All are on board for something special, first time ever. We will get it done.”

On Friday – the same day a video of diplomats walking out on Mr Netanyahu during his address to the United Nations went viral – Mr Trump said he believed the US had reached a deal on easing fighting in Gaza, saying it “will get the hostages back” and “end the war”.

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Diplomats walk out as Israeli PM speaks at UN

“I think we maybe have a deal on Gaza, very close to a deal on Gaza,” the US president told reporters on the White House lawn as he was leaving to attend the Ryder Cup.

Mr Trump has repeatedly claimed an agreement to end the war was imminent, only for nothing to materialise.

Weeks ago, he said: “I think we’re going to have a deal on Gaza very soon.”

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‘I’m not so careful with what I say’ – is Trump feeling more invincible than ever?

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'I'm not so careful with what I say' - is Trump feeling more invincible than ever?

It was one sentence among the many words Donald Trump spoke this week that caught my attention.

Midway through a jaw-dropping news conference where he sensationally claimed to have “found an answer on autism”, he said: “Bobby (Kennedy) wants to be very careful with what he says, but I’m not so careful with what I say.”

The US president has gone from pushing the envelope to completely unfiltered.

Last Sunday, moments after Charlie Kirk‘s widow Erika had publicly forgiven her husband’s killer, Mr Trump told the congregation at his memorial service that he “hates his opponents”.

President Donald Trump embraces Charlie Kirk's widow Erika. Pic: AP
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President Donald Trump embraces Charlie Kirk’s widow Erika. Pic: AP

Twenty-four hours later, he drew fierce rebuke from medical experts by linking the use of Tylenol (paracetamol) during pregnancy to increased risk of autism.

The president treats professional disapproval not as a liability but as evidence of authenticity, fuelling the aura that he is a challenger of conventions.

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‘Paracetamol use in pregnancy perfectly safe’

On Tuesday, he went to the United Nations, where his frustrations over a stalled escalator and teleprompter failure were the prelude to the most combative address.

More on Donald Trump

“I’m really good at this stuff. Your countries are going to hell,” he told his audience, deriding Europe’s approach to immigration as a “failed experiment of open borders”.

Mr Trump addresses the UN General Assembly in New York. Pic: Reuters
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Mr Trump addresses the UN General Assembly in New York. Pic: Reuters

Then came a U-turn on Ukraine, suggesting the country could win back all the land it has lost to Russia.

Most politicians would be punished for inconsistency, but Mr Trump recasts this as strategic genius – framing himself as dictating the terms.

It is hard to keep track when his expressed hopes for peace in Ukraine and Gaza are peppered with social media posts condemning the return of Jimmy Kimmel to late-night television.

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Trump’s major shift in Ukraine policy

Perhaps most striking of all is his reaction to the indictment of James Comey, the FBI director he fired during his first term.

In theory, this should raise questions about the president’s past conflicts with law enforcement, but he frames it as vindication, proof that his enemies fall while he survives.

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Ex-FBI chief: ‘Costs to standing up to Trump’

Mr Trump has spent much of his political career cultivating an image of a man above the normal consequences of politics, law or diplomacy, but he appears to feel more invincible than ever.

Read more from Sky News:
Musk and Prince Andrew named in latest Epstein files
Trump: ‘Looks like we have a deal’ to end war in Gaza

From funerals to world summits, world peace to public health, he projects the same image: rules are for others.

It is the politics of the untouchable.

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Russia launches massive attack on Kyiv – as Poland scrambles jets and closes airspace

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Russia launches massive attack on Kyiv - as Poland scrambles jets and closes airspace

Russia has launched a massive drone attack on Ukraine’s capital this morning, injuring at least six people, Kyiv’s military administration has said.

Poland closed the airspace near two of its southeastern cities, Lublin and Rzeszow, as its air force scrambled jets in response to Russia’s attack on Kyiv.

Drones flew over Kyiv and anti-aircraft fire rang out through the night in what independent monitors said was one of the biggest strikes on the city since the Ukraine war began in February 2022.

The attack started at around 6am local time and many regions across the country are under air raid alert.

Some residents have fled to metro stations deep underground for safety as the attack continues.

Poland said it had closed its airspace near the two cities until at least 4am GMT due to “unplanned military activity related to ensuring state security”, flight tracking service Flightradar24 said.

“In connection with the activity of the Russian Federation’s long-range aviation carrying out strikes on the territory of
Ukraine, Polish and allied aircraft have begun operating in our airspace,” the military said in a post on X.

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It described the actions as preventive and aimed at securing airspace and protecting citizens.

It comes as Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was expected to address allegations made against Moscow that it has violated the airspace of several of its neighbours in recent weeks, as he spoke in New York at the 80th UN General Assembly.

A NATO air defence mission was recently carried out over Poland in response to “unprecedented” Russian drone incursions above the country.

During his address, Mr Lavrov, who has been Russia’s foreign minister for 21 years, says his country had no intention of attacking any NATO or EU member state but warned of a “decisive response” if any “aggression” was directed towards Moscow.

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