More than 1,000 doctors, nurses killed in Israel’s war on Gaza
Local authorities in Gaza have again accused Israel of deliberately bombing, besieging and storming hospitals in the enclave and killing more than 1,000 doctors and nurses. In a statement to the Wafa news agency, the officials said an additional 310 medical personnel from Gaza have been “arrested, tortured and executed” in Israeli prisons.
The Israeli military has also “prevented the entry of medical supplies, health delegations, and hundreds of surgeons into Gaza”, the statement added.
Kamal Adwan doctor accuses Israel of using a new type of weapon in northern Gaza
Dr Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the besieged Kamal Adwan Hospital in Beit Lahiya, has renewed an appeal for global intervention in a letter published in English on Telegram.
“We are speaking from the center of the intensive care unit, the only one in the northern Gaza Strip, after enduring over fifty days of siege,” he wrote.
“After the failure of the occupying army to evacuate the north, they have now begun to directly target our healthcare system… For the past seven consecutive days, we have been bombed directly,” he said. These include attacks on the hospital’s reception, emergency departments, the electricity generators, the oxygen station and the water network, he said.
The doctor, who was also wounded in an Israeli attack on Saturday, said “everyone here is at risk” and accused Israeli forces of using a new type of weapon against people at the facility. “Specifically a quadcopter that drops bombs containing tiny fragments that are nearly invisible to the naked eye. These projectiles penetrate the bodies of our workers, causing severe bleeding and damage to internal organs,” he said.
Israeli forces are waging a “campaign of extermination” in northern Gaza, he said. “Once again, we urgently call on the world to stop the bloodshed occurring in the northern Gaza Strip."
Abu Safia also called for the immediate release of dozens of medical staff who were detained by Israeli forces in late October.
“They were brutally detained, beaten, and insulted, dragged in an inhuman manner,” Abu Safia said in his letter posted on Telegram.
“Unfortunately, we still have no information on their whereabouts or wellbeing,” he added. “We call on the world to intervene immediately to ascertain the fate of our colleagues who were arrested and to secure their release without delay.”
‘Designed to kill’: Israel accused of using bombs that scatter tiny metal cubes
Hussam Abu Safia, the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, says Israeli quadcopter drones have been dropping bombs containing tiny fragments that are nearly invisible to the naked eye, but that cause severe bleeding and damage to internal organs.
Several other doctors who have worked in Gaza have also described treating patients injured by tiny metal cubes that leave minimal entry wounds but cause huge internal injuries.
Dr Mohammed Tahir, a British surgeon working at a hospital in Gaza, described finding one of the three-mm (0.12-inch) cubes made from tungsten inside a young patient he was treating, in a video published by AJ+.
British surgeon Nizam Mamode also recently testified to a United Kingdom parliamentary committee about treating children with similar wounds.
