Doctor describes 'flood of the dead' in Gaza hospital

The National

16 hours ago

Rossel Mohrij, a reconstructive surgeon based at a hospital in Oxford, has worked in Gaza twice since Israel's genocidal assault on the Palestinians began nearly two years ago.
The 38-year-old said she worked mainly with children during her time at the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in December 2024.
She said the volume of patients at the hospital, where mass graves were found last April, would 'shut down any major hospital here in a couple of days'.
Her co-workers would come to the hospital 'soaking wet because they slept in tents that offered no protection from the elements', Mohrij told a press conference in London on Thursday.
They would also survive on just one meal a day and did not know 'whether their family would still be alive at the end of their shift', she added.
(Image: AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman)
Mohrij said: 'I remember operating with a local surgeon whose phone wouldn't stop ringing. I asked him to pick it up, his wife was calling him to tell him that their son – who had been detained by the IDF for months – had been released; tortured, injured but still alive.
'In the UK, we would take time off for a sprained finger, let alone having your son detained not knowing whether he's alive or dead.'
She described how operations were carried out with 'blunt instruments' and without basic hygiene supplies like sterile dressings – and said doctors were reduced to using vinegar to clean infections.
One night, said Mohrij, she was approaching the end of her day when a bomb struck a school near the hospital at around 11pm at night after the surgeons had cleared their list of patients for the day.
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She said: 'What came into the emergency department that night is beyond anything I've ever seen, I will carry it with me forever. A flood of the dead, dying, the dismembered, people searching through the chaos, through faces, through limbs, looking for their loved ones.
'Children too stunned to cry, too shattered to speak, staring at their missing body parts.'
One child had lost his limbs and 19 members of his family, added Mohrij.
She said: 'What do I say to that child when he wakes up? 'You've lost your leg, you've lost everyone you love.''
Mohrij, who works at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, went on to describe her and colleagues gathered at the foot of a bed where a young boy was lying after being injured in a bombing.
(Image: Getty Images)
She said: 'He was stuck in the rubble so presented late with severe burn injuries to his legs. They were so severe that the blood supply to his legs were restricted.
'Me, some other visiting surgeons, some local surgeons stood at his feet, debating how to make his death less excruciating. He did not understand our words but I guess he felt our despair. We quietly covered his face with a white cloth to block the world out. He died the next morning.'
Another patient had suffered an injury to his foot through bombing and, though his wounds were clean, he had caught an infection, she said. Without any means of investigating and because he was 'severely malnourished' he suffered from multiple organ failure and died within days, Mohrij said.
She added: 'He would have lived here or in any moderately equipped hospital.'
Mohrij noted that the conditions she described were the situation at the end of last year adding: 'I can't even imagine how bad things are now with no aid and no proper functioning hospitals.'