Gaza civilians suffering combat-level wounds: Study
Civilians in Gaza are sustaining injuries of the type and scale usually suffered among soldiers involved in intense combat, new research says.
A study published in the British Medical Journal found some types of wounds – such as burns or injuries to legs – are more common among civilians in Gaza than among US soldiers fighting in recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Injured civilians in Gaza are experiencing a pattern of wounds that you would expect in intense combat with military professionals. The distribution and nature [of injuries] is almost the same or worse,” said Bilal Irfan, a bioethicist who conducts research at the University of Michigan and one of the study’s authors.
Other findings:
- Overall 23,726 trauma-related wounds were reported, of which 18 percent were burns.
- Significant injuries affected the head, chest, and limbs.
- About 67 percent of wounds were from blasts, and the rest gunshots.
- One-in-10 burns injuries were fourth degree, meaning they penetrated all tissue layers down to the bone.
Foreign doctors in Gaza describe worst wounds ‘they’ve ever seen’
Earlier we reported on a new study showing how the wounds of tens of thousands of civilian victims in Gaza from Israeli attacks are “unusually severe”.
British surgeon Omar el-Taji, who volunteered in Gaza, noted the civilian wounds sustained in the war-ravaged Palestinian territory are similar to the rate suffered by US soldiers during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
El-Taji emphasised this was a “really significant” difference because unlike civilians, soldiers have training and protection and know they’re headed towards danger.
When he deployed to Gaza last year, el-Taji said he saw a shocking “amount of children that came in with burns so severe that you could literally see their muscle and see their bone”.
Anthony Bull, a professor at Imperial College London’s Centre for Blast Injury Studies, who was not involved in the research, said “this is a very important piece of work”. The data only includes wounded people who “survived to the point of seeing a healthcare worker”, Bull noted.
A severely wounded man at Nasser Hospital in southern Khan Younis
