‘I heard a screech of missiles… then the ceiling fell’: British doctor describes moment blast ripped through Gaza hospital before he started treating horrifically injured patients
- Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was at Al-Ahli Hospital when the explosion took place
A British-Palestinian doctor who was treating patients at the al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza has told of the horror he witnessed as a huge fireball rocked his operating theatre and wards, killing hundreds.
Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah, 54, left his family in the UK to help treat wounded Palestinians amid the onslaught of Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip following Hamas’s terror attacks.
The doctor, who runs a Harley Street plastic surgery clinic, arrived at the Christian hospital just hours before it was hit, and was caught up in what he described as the ‘massacre’.
The surgeon has told how he had planned to sleep at the hospital to continue treating severely injured patients through the night when a massive explosion ripped through the building.
He was among the medics who appeared with the bodies of dead babies in the hours after a ‘hell of fire’ erupted at the hospital last night, and has told how he carried the injured past dismembered bodies to get them to another hospital.
Dr Ghassan Abu Sittah left his family in the UK to help treat wounded Palestinians
Doctors stand outside al-Shifa hospital surrounded by a sea of dead children brought in from nearby al-Ahli hospital after the explosion
Professor Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a doctor with Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP), in Al Awda hospital, Gaza, in 2018
Posting on Facebook in the aftermath of the explosion, which happened just after 7pm local time, the doctor revealed how he had rushed out of theatre to help the victims after hearing ‘the screech of two missiles and a load explosion’.
He said he had just arrived at the hospital that morning after hearing it needed the help of a plastic surgeon, and that he found it ‘full of internally displaced families seeking refuge’.
After working on patients all day, he said he decided with his colleagues to stay there overnight to continue operate on the many people already admitted.
Shortly after, he said, the operating theatre was shaken and a ‘strong explosion’ shook the room, causing the ceiling to collapse around him and his team.
He rushed out of the building, and saw that the hospital had been consumed by flames, before he began to realise the horror of what had happened.
‘The wounded started stumbling towards us. I then ran to the Emergency Room where there were hundreds of very severely wounded and dead.
‘I put a tourniquet on the thigh of a man who had his leg blown off and then went to tend to a man with a penetrating neck injury.’
When the ambulance arrived, he said, he went with the patient and paramedics to Gaza’s largest public hospital to get him treatment.
‘The remaining patients who were at Ahli (Baptist Hospital) Hospital were moved to Shifa Hospital,’ he said, warning: ‘Shifa has now run out of external fixators needed to stabilise fractures.’
Pictured: The burning hospital building after the strike on Tuesday night
In a chilling account of the aftermath of the attack, Dr Abu Sitteh, said that he believes the current death toll will increase, ‘as I saw many dismembered bodies and parts of bodies as I carried the last patient into the ambulance past the courtyard.
‘The number of children who were killed exceeds 50 per cent. I saw a body of a toddler who was missing a head.
The doctor said he was unharmed, but condemned what he said was ‘a massacre against a hospital’.
‘Hospitals are not a target… This bloodshed must stop. Enough is enough.’
The source of the explosion remains aggressively disputed, with a blame game erupting between Hamas and Israel as the terrorists claim it was the result of an Israeli air strike while the IDF blames Islamic Jihad militants for a misfired rocket.
Blood-soaked sheets are covering the victims of a violent explosion overnight
Dr Abu-Sittah, who has been a vocal critic of Israel for many years, has laid the blame for the attack squarely at Israel’s door, calling it ‘a massacre by appointment.’
‘The Israeli government has been openly saying it was going to target hospitals for the last week and the world just stood by and did nothing,’ he said.
The Israeli Defense Forces earlier published what they claimed was evidence that proves last night’s explosion was caused by a misfiring rocket from Palestinian group Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
The IDF earlier shared an audio clip procured by Israeli military intelligence in which two alleged Hamas terrorists can be heard discussing the explosion and confirming the rocket came from PIJ – an independent jihadist group.
But Hamas, the terror group who rules the Gaza Strip, slammed the IDF’s purported evidence as fake, saying ‘its outrageous lies do not deceive anyone’.
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