Latest news with #NickMaynard
Channel 4
2 days ago
- Health
- Channel 4
Teenagers being shot by Israeli soldiers – British surgeon in Gaza
Nick Maynard is a British gastrointestinal surgeon, who is currently in Gaza, working at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis. We began by asking him what he can tell us about the shootings near the aid distribution sites this morning.
The Independent
3 days ago
- Health
- The Independent
IDF soldiers deliberately wounding children in Gaza ‘like a game', says British doctor
A British surgeon in Gaza has claimed medical workers are seeing 'clear patterns of injury', suggesting IDF soldiers are deliberately shooting Gazan children in different body parts depending on the day of the week. Professor Nick Maynard told BBC Radio 4 he and his colleagues have experienced unusually high instances of gunshot victims targeted at aid distribution sites - mainly teenage boys - needing treatment for similar injuries. 'On one day they'll all be abdominal gunshot wounds, on another they'll all be head gunshot wounds or neck gunshot wounds, on another they'll be arm or leg gunshot wounds,' he said. 'It's almost as if a game is being played, that they're deciding to shoot the head today, the neck tomorrow, the testicles the day after.' The IDF have released a statement to the BBC categorically rejecting Professor Maynard's claims.
Arab News
4 days ago
- Health
- Arab News
British surgeon in Gaza describes wounded Palestinians dying due to malnutrition
LONDON: Palestinians being treated in one of Gaza's few remaining hospitals are dying from their wounds because they are so malnourished, a British doctor working in the territory said. Professor Nick Maynard, a consultant gastrointestinal surgeon, who is on his third stint volunteering in the territory since the war started, said he is seeing unprecedented levels of severe malnutrition. 'The malnutrition I'm seeing here is indescribably bad. It's much, much worse now than a year ago,' Maynard, who is based at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, said. UNICEF chief Catherine Russell told the UN Security Council on Wednesday that acute malnutrition among children in Gaza had almost tripled after Israel imposed an 11-week blockade on food aid to the territory in March. A post shared by Medical Aid for Palestinians (@medicalaidpal) Maynard said malnutrition levels were directly contributing to preventable deaths among patients receiving surgery. He said those injured in Israel's military attacks were dying because being malnourished prevents proper healing. 'The repairs that we carry out fall to pieces; patients get terrible infections and they die,' Maynard, who is volunteering with Medical Aid for Palestinians, said. 'I have had so many patients die because they can't get enough food to recover, it's distressing to see that and know that it is preventable and treatable.' Maynard said babies in Nasser's neonatal unit have been particularly affected, with four recent infant deaths blamed on malnutrition. The surgeon said he had been reduced to tears by the state of the children he has seen. 'I saw a seven-month-old who looked like a newborn,' Maynard said. 'The expression 'skin and bones' doesn't do it justice. We have almost no liquid or intravenous feeds — children are being given essentially 10 percent sugar water, which is not proper nutritional support.' Maynard said he had even seen the effects of malnutrition in his Palestinian colleagues, who were barely recognizable from when he had worked with them a year ago. He said many had lost 20-30kg due to the food shortages. Israel's blockade of Gaza lead to widespread warnings that the territory could descend into a state of famine. Surgeon Nick Maynard is on his third visit to Gaza since the war started. He said the levels of severe malnutrition are unprecedented. (MAP) In her briefing to the security council, UNICEF's Russell said that of the more than 113,000 children screened for malnutrition in June, almost 6,000 were found to be acutely malnourished — an 180 percent increase in acute malnutrition cases compared to February. 'Children in Gaza are enduring catastrophic living conditions, including severe food insecurity and malnutrition,' she said. Maynard, who is usually based at Oxford University Hospital, has been traveling to volunteer in Gaza with MAP for more than 10 years. While on his current posting, he has witnessed the daily arrival of Palestinians who have been shot while trying to access food aid through distribution hubs set up by the new Israeli- and US-run Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. 'We have hundreds of trauma casualties coming in every day, it's relentless,' he said. 'This is not only from Israeli military airstrikes and attacks, but we are also treating multiple gunshot wounds every day. 'These are mainly from the militarized distribution points, where starving civilians are going to try and get food but then report getting targeted by Israeli soldiers or quadcopters.' The surgeon said he had mostly been operating on boys aged 12 or 13 who had been sent to the aid hubs to get food for their families. 'A 12-year-old boy I was operating on died from his injuries on the operating table — he had been shot through the chest.' Maynard called on the international community to force Israel to allow the full flow of food and aid into Gaza, and to end the 'collective punishment' of the territory's population. 'The enforced malnutrition and attacks on civilians we are witnessing will kill many more thousands of people if not stopped,' he said.
Middle East Eye
16-05-2025
- Politics
- Middle East Eye
UK Middle East minister dismissed Gaza genocide concerns as 'obnoxious'
The UK's Middle East minister dismissed concerns that a genocide was unfolding in Gaza as 'obnoxious and hideous' during a fraught meeting with humanitarian organisations last year, it has been revealed. The minister, Andrew Mitchell, is said to have been on his phone for most of the session, which was also attended by then-foreign secretary David Cameron, and left a prominent British surgeon who had just returned from working in Gaza feeling he had been part of 'tick-box exercise'. Professor Nick Maynard, who relayed his experiences in evidence to the High Court as part of the legal challenge brought over UK arms exports to Israel, said he had brought laminated photos of injured children to try to get his point across, but to no avail. 'I had a very limited time to speak, but there was no question that the foreign secretary was given the information detailing the indiscriminate mutilation and killing of children in Gaza,' he wrote in a witness statement of the February 2024 meeting. 'I left the meeting with no confidence that the information would be acted upon, and in my view the information we gave them was ignored.' New MEE newsletter: Jerusalem Dispatch Sign up to get the latest insights and analysis on Israel-Palestine, alongside Turkey Unpacked and other MEE newsletters Mitchell has declined to comment on Maynard's account. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development office has been approached for comment. First-hand accounts Fifteen months later, Maynard's testimony and those of other British healthcare workers who have worked in Gaza were read aloud in front of the High Court on Friday morning. It was the fourth and final day of the judicial review to decide whether British ministers have acted lawfully by continuing to supply UK-made F-35 parts that could end up in Israeli fighter jets. Mitchell and Cameron were foreign office ministers in the previous Conservative government, which was in office before the current Labour government's general election victory last July. 'The foreign secretary was given the information detailing the indiscriminate mutilation and killing of children in Gaza' - Nick Maynard, British surgeon The Labour government in September suspended about 30 arms export licences over concerns that weapons supplied by the UK could be used in violation of international humanitarian law. But F-35 fighter jet components, which British companies supply to a global spare parts pool, were partially exempted, with the government citing national security concerns. Campaigners argue the exemption means that British-made components could still end up in Israeli jets indirectly through the global pool, and has left the government in breach of its domestic and international obligations. Doctors who spoke outside the court said that, like Maynard, they feel that the first-hand evidence they have provided on their return from missions to Gaza have been ignored by successive British governments. Their slow-boiling concern became acute this week when it emerged in court documents that the government had assessed in June 2024 that there was no evidence that Israel was deliberately targeting civilian women or children. The assessment, made by the Export Control Joint Unit, a cross-departmental body overseeing UK export controls and licensing for military items, cited in court documents said: 'There is also evidence of Israel making efforts to limit incidental harm to civilians.' Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, a British-Egyptian paediatric neurologist and founder of Health Workers for Palestine, said he felt compelled to speak up as a healthcare worker who had been to Gaza. Dr Omar Abdel-Mannan, a British-Egyptian doctor who has worked in Gaza, speaks in front of the High Court in London on 16 May 2025 (MEE/Dania Akkad) 'Eighteen months in, we are watching exactly the same systematic targeting of civilians, of health workers, of women, children and men in Gaza,' he said. 'These are human beings. We talk about their endurance. We talk about their steadfastness, but these are human beings. They can only endure so much. Sadly, they have been dehumanised.' Dr James Smith, an emergency physician in London who worked in Gaza for over two months, also challenged the government's implication that Israel had not targeted Palestinian civilians. 'What then happens when you bomb hospitals, schools, bakeries and displaced person camps?' he said. 'What happens when you force 2.1 million people into ever-shrinking so-called safe zones only to besiege and bomb those places too?' Smith read out testimony which has been provided to the court by Dr Mark Perlmutter, a US-based orthopaedic surgeon who worked in Gaza. 'All of the disasters I've seen, all of them combined, do not equal the level of carnage that I saw against civilians in just my first week in Gaza,' Perlmutter told the court. 'These two children were shot so perfectly in the chest that I couldn't have put my stethoscope over their hearts more accurately' - Dr Mark Perlmutter, orthopedic surgeon Perlmutter said he treated many children who had been shot, some of them multiple times. 'For example, I evaluated two children that were snipered twice each. Both received central chest wounds and side of the head wounds which meant the child was shot a second time after they died and probably were already on the ground,' he testified. "These two children were shot so perfectly in the chest that I couldn't have put my stethoscope over their hearts more accurately.' Perlmutter also told the court that he had treated multiple pre-teen children with gunshot wounds to the head, including some who were eight or nine years old. 'Most of the children shot in the head died slowly. Their families told us they had been shot by Israeli forces while playing inside or in the streets.' After reading Perlmutter's testimony, Smith himself shared how he had held Palestinian children 'whose arms and legs have been blown apart by Israeli missiles'. 'I was by the side of a Palestinian infant no older than one-year of age as he died of an injury inflicted by an Israeli strike,' he said. 'My colleague and I could do nothing for him but wrap him in a blanket as he died alone on a floor.' 'Wishful blindness' Gearoid O Cuinn, director of the UK-based Global Legal Action Network (GLAN), one of the groups who have brought the challenge to the court, say the government's claim that it has seen no evidence of the targeting of women and children is 'wishful blindness'. Specifically, he said on Friday that the government had submitted a document to the court entitled 'Research report: long range shootings and shootings of minors' but has refused to share it with GLAN without citing why it has been withheld. 'This is the only legal mechanism that we have. It's painfully slow and it's technical and we are not given all the information. We are fighting with our hand tied behind our back,' he said. The Department for Business and Trade, the government department that is being challenged in the case, did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the document. A ruling is expected in the challenge in the coming months.
