After Al-Ahli Hospital Blast Kills 500, Gaza Doctor Fears for His Life & Safety of His Patients
Medical workers in Gaza are racing to treat survivors of a massive explosion Tuesday at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital, where displaced people were sheltering from Israel’s unrelenting attacks when, Palestinian officials say, an Israeli airstrike hit the compound, killing hundreds of people. Israel denied responsibility, blaming a failed rocket launch by militants for the blast. Israeli strikes had already damaged the hospital once before, and have killed medical workers and struck other medical facilities since it started bombing Gaza in retaliation for a deadly Hamas raid into Israel on October 7. “As a physician, I’m afraid if I now leave and go to work, my hospital is going to be hit, as well,” says Dr. Hammam Alloh, an internal medicine and nephrology specialist at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, which is the largest hospital in Gaza. He describes how “almost 40,000” people are seeking refuge outside of hospital buildings in Gaza.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: Palestinian officials are accusing Israel of killing over 500 people in an airstrike on a hospital in Gaza City where thousands of civilians had sought refuge. Israel has denied responsibility, claiming the explosion was caused by a failed rocket fired by the militant group Islamic Jihad. Palestinian officials have blasted Israel’s claim, pointing out Israeli military had already hit the hospital just days before.
This is Dr. Fadel Naim, head of the orthopedic surgery department at Al-Ahli Hospital.
DR. FADEL NAIM: [translated] I will describe what I saw myself. I was in the surgery department, and I had just finished a surgery, and I was about to rest before my next surgery. Suddenly we heard the sound of a huge explosion. In the beginning, we thought it was one of the explosions we hear all the time. We didn’t think it was in the hospital. Then people came to the surgery department screaming and yelling, asking us to save them, telling us they were injured and dead people. It was a shock for everyone. The hospital was full of dead people, injured people and body parts. People were crying and screaming. We tried to give first aid, but there were more injuries than we could handle with our limited resources at the hospital. Many people were martyred. Some of them were alive. We saw them alive and breathing, but we could not do anything for them. They died in our arms. We saw them.
AMY GOODMAN: The blast came just hours before President Biden landed in Israel for an unprecedented wartime visit to Israel, where he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to express U.S. support for Israel. Biden placed the blame for the hospital strike on Palestinians.
PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: I was deeply saddened and outraged by the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday. And based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you.
AMY GOODMAN: Biden said it appears “it was done by the other team, not you.”
Earlier today, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres called for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
SECRETARY–GENERAL ANTÓNIO GUTERRES: [I call] for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire to provide sufficient time and space to help realize my two appeals and to ease the epic human suffering we are witnessing. Too many lives and the fate of the entire region hang on the balance.
AMY GOODMAN: On Tuesday night, Democracy Now!‘s Messiah Rhodes spoke with Dr. Hammam Alloh, an internal medicine and nephrology specialist working in Gaza City at the largest hospital, Al-Shifa, which is around five miles away from Al-Ahli Hospital, where over 500 Palestinians died in an airstrike. Dr. Alloh said an earlier Israeli airstrike had hit Al-Ahli Hospital days before Tuesday’s devastating blast.
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: This is a Baptist hospital — am I clear enough? — a Baptist hospital. This is definitely something not related to Islam or to whatever extremist, extremist group some people consider. So, it is a very old hospital, aged more than 100 years. So, it is situated in a very densely populated area. It was hit the day before, but patients, refugees and staff couldn’t simply leave the hospital. So it was —
MESSIAH RHODES: So, you’re saying that the hospital was hit before?
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. And then, when it was finally hit again, the death toll is rising now to more than 800 lives lost. And what if this is going to happen in other hospitals, in bigger hospitals? The massacre is going to be worse. There will be no safe shelter for all patients. As a physician, I’m afraid if I now leave and go to work, my hospital is going to be hit, as well. And we have — for example, in terms of dialysis, we have only now five hospitals providing hemodialysis service. What if nurses are afraid of going there? What if patients are afraid of going there? What if injured patients, war injured, with war-related injuries, do not go there? This means not slow; this is even fast death, very rapid death.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Hammam Alloh went on to describe how tens of thousands of civilians have sought refuge at the hospitals in Gaza.
DR. HAMMAM ALLOH: In Al-Shifa Hospital, there are almost 40,000 persons in the — outside the hospital buildings. They came looking for safer shelter away from their high-risk areas. Those are in addition to the patients now living in the hospital hallways. Wherever you go, no matter what part you go to, there are a lot of people sleeping — kids, women, ladies, elderly patients. Some of them are immunosuppressed. They are living in the hospital hallways, so you can barely even walk through the hallway because of people actually living there for more than a week. And you can’t just simply ask them to leave so you can walk freely, because they have no safer shelter. And many of those lost their homes now, so this is their new home.
So, if you could imagine the amount and the magnitude of transmissible diseases and infections, speaking of which, yesterday I met the first patient with a disease called leptospirosis. This is a bad disease that we usually get from poorly hygienic living circumstances, transmitted by rodents and sewage water and dirty drinking water. So, this disease affects badly our kidneys and liver. The patient is in a state of acute renal failure, acute kidney injury. His whole life is threatened. And this is because he was in an UNRWA school as a shelter, but those schools are now very busy, with very unlivable living circumstances. But he had to be there with his family looking for safer shelter away from his threatened house.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Dr. Hammam Alloh, an internal medicine and nephrology specialist working in Gaza City at Al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest.
Gaza’s Ahli: Large Numbers of People Took Refuge There because it is a Christian Hospital
Wounded transferred to the already overwhelmed Al-Shifa Hospital where doctors are performing surgery on the floor and in the halls, mostly without anaesthetics
The appalling loss of civilian life at the bombed Ahli Hospital has provoked worldwide outrage accompanied by Israel and Islamic Jihad trading accusations of blame.
Somebody who knows the hospital well is Ang Swee Chai, the orthopaedic surgeon and author. She became the first female consultant orthopaedic surgeon at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in London and is co-founder of the charity Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).
Responding to an appeal for medical personnel from Christian Aid to treat war casualties in Lebanon, Ang Swee went to work at a hospital near the Sabra and Shatila refugee camp in Beirut where she witnessed the Sabra-Shatila massacre during the Israeli invasion in 1982. Yasser Arafat awarded her the Star of Palestine, the highest award for service to the Palestinian people.
According to this report, extensive damage from the bomb strike on the Ahli Hospital caused ambulances and private cars to rush some 350 casualties to Gaza City’s main hospital, Al-Shifa, which is already overwhelmed with wounded from other strikes. Its director, Mohammed Abu-Selmia, said doctors there were performing surgery on the floor and in the halls, mostly without anaesthetics. “We need equipment, we need medicine, we need beds, we need anaesthetics, we need everything.”
And he warned that fuel for the hospital’s generators would run out within hours, forcing a complete shutdown, unless supplies were allowed to enter the Gaza Strip.
The crisis prompted Swee to email friends:
I am devastated. Ahli Hospital is the only Christian Hospital in the Gaza Strip and it is so well loved by everyone, both Muslims and Christians. It was built by the Church Mission Society around 1900. I first worked and lived in Ahli Hospital 1988-89 having answered a request from the Bishop of Jerusalem to look after the wounded of the First Intifada. I told the Bishop I would look after and protect them.
Large numbers of people were sheltering there as it is a Christian Hospital. There was no other place of safety – and there is also a water fountain to drink from given there was no water in Gaza. The bombs came without warning and targeted the centre of the courtyard where people were taking refuge.
Hundreds of bodies were lying in hospital courtyard – initially thought to be 500, then body count went up to 600, and now 810, many children dead. You can see the videos on Palestine TV and it is Ahli Hospital alright. Not fake news. We do not know whether the Hospital Director Dr Zulaiha Tarazi or the chief surgeon Dr Mahir and the faithful hospital staff who had been serving the hospital throughout their lives have survived or not.
I wish I can be with them at this terrible moment. Professor Ghassan Abu-Sitta is now working there to help the wounded but I know he must be completely exhausted. His wife managed to facetime him yesterday and he has lost a lot of weight in ten days.
Please pray for the dead. Console the mourners and stand in solidarity with the people of Gaza.
Love you and God bless,
Swee
The argument over whose fault it was seems to revolve around Israel’s claim that it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that misfired, and that some 450 rockets launched from Gaza had fallen short and landed inside the Strip in the last 11 days. They say the blast was consistent with unspent rocket fuel catching fire and the damage was caused by the propellant as much as the warhead.
Islamic Jihad points to Israel’s warning to evacuate Al-Ahli and reports of a previous blast at the hospital, showing that the building was an Israeli target. The size of the explosion, the trajectory of the falling bomb and the extent of the destruction all suggest it was an Israeli strike.
I’m reminded of earlier days when most of Gaza’s garden-shed wizz-bangs failed to clear the border fence and the effort looked sadly amateurish. Surely they have progressed since then.
Stuart Littlewood’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper, can be read on the internet by visiting radiofreepalestine.org.uk. Read other articles by Stuart, or visit Stuart's website.
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