Gaza: “I have seen children aged 1 and 2, victims of bombings, with amputations at groin level”

Dr. Aldo Rodríguez, Mexican surgeon of Doctors Without Borders (MSF)describes the alarming desperation he witnessed in Loop While providing urgent care to victims of the bombings, including children orphaned by violence, this is his testimony:

“After waiting a month in Egypton November 14th I entered Loop as part of a team of specialists MSF. We met with scenes of utter despair. Trapped civilians. No fuel, no food, no water. No ambulances. Attacks on hospitals are a fact. And people are increasingly desperate.

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My first hours in Gaza were marked by the constant noise of the drones that Israel uses to monitor the enclave. The shrill sound is heard non-stop, throughout the day and even at night. I also saw buildings collapse and others completely collapsed. Although he knew beforehand the terrible conditions in Gaza, It is shocking to see everything in ruinspeople looking for food under the rubble, endless lines to get some bread. There is no place in Gaza that does not have a destroyed building.

Prepared to provide all possible medical support, the team got to work on the Khan Yunis Nasser Hospital. At that time, Nasser had become the largest operating hospital in Gaza following the incessant attacks on Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City., in the north of the enclave. But He had twice as many patients as he could care for.and people were setting up tents to take shelter from the air raids and bombings in other places. Some patients have been left homeless and they have nowhere to go after being discharged. Many get stuck in the hospitalwhere at least it is warm and there is drinking water.

On the third day, a missile fell on a refugee camp located less than a kilometer from the hospital.. We felt the building shake and the windows creak. Within 10 minutes ambulances began to arrive. Instead of seeing children playing or resting, what is seen is heartbreaking: children with amputations, women with serious burns.. They arrive in very bad condition and we have to do intensive therapy.

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A week later, after treating as many patients as possible, the team moved to the Al Aqsa Hospital, in the central area of Loopwhere there was also intense bombing. Under normal circumstances it has about 200 beds, but due to the high number of patients, the hospital had to create 450 more. There, our team supported triage – the process of identifying patients based on the severity of their condition – and conducted consultations and surgeries, managed wound care, and provided physical therapy and mental health care to patients with trauma-related injuries. war.

On January 6, however, we had to pull our staff out of Al Aqsa after the area received evacuation orders from the Israeli army. Before the evacuation, drones and snipers injured relatives of our personnel, a bullet entered the intensive care unit and the intense fighting, increasingly closer to the hospitalprevented staff from accessing the facilities. MSF has urged Israeli forces to protect patients and staff who continue to work and receive treatment inside the hospital. On January 7, a drone attacked the administrative building of the hospital and several people who were in his patio. On January 10, 40 people were killed and more than 150 injured in airstrikes against buildings located at the entrance to Al Aqsa Hospital.

Al Aqsa remains the only partially functioning hospital in the central area of Loop and serves a large Deir Al Balah community, including several refugee camps.

It is not easy to move within Gaza, not even to go to work. The morning we moved to the central area, two Israeli tanks cut off the main road and divided the south of Loop in two parts. So many people were stuck where they live or work, without access to food and other supplies on the other side. The only way to cross was on a road next to the beach, but without a car or gasoline, people were trapped. And we all had to deal with frequent telecommunications outages.

In the central area, drones and bombing were present 24 hours a day. Every day, two or three times a day, bombs fell not far away, followed by an avalanche of wounded or dead arriving at the hospital, already overcrowded. The attacks were very powerful and those affected arrived with severe brain trauma, unconscious and without a leg or an arm. Many patients were facing the loss of close family members. or your home, in addition to the physical pain.

Some of my most difficult moments in Loop They were during the 20 or 25 surgical interventions he performed each day. I had very young patients who were the only survivors in their family and arrived at the hospital alone. I had cases of 1 and 2 year old children, victims of bombings, with traumatic leg amputations, at the level of the groin. Due to the high number of children who arrived without any family, we began to use the English acronym WCNSF, which means ‘injured child, no surviving family’.

Every day I saw these children alone and devastated. Some said they were playing just before they were attacked. After the amputation they remain depressed, without wanting to talk. It is a dramatic situation because it is not just about the surgery, but about everything that comes after. Even if they are discharged, they stay around because they don’t know what to do and have nowhere to go. They may be better physically, but mentally they are devastated.

Before I leave, the people I met in Loop They asked me to share what I saw and did during my time there, and the pain they suffered. They want people around the world to know what is happening to the Palestinians in Gaza and what they are going through. I saw with my own eyes the heartbreaking three-month aftermath of this terrible war. Every day more lives are lost and human desperation worsens. “This siege and indiscriminate violence must end now.”

*Dr. Aldo Rodríguez is originally from Mexico and began working as a surgeon with Doctors Without Borders in 2018. Before going to Gaza in November, he worked with the organization in Khartoum, Sudan, where intense fighting has displaced millions of people since April 2023. He has also worked in other countries suffering from acute violence and forgotten crises, such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Burundi and Yemen.