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Lose a limb or risk death? Growing numbers among Gaza’s thousands of war-wounded face hard decisions

By WAFAA SHURAFA and JACK JEFFERY

DEIR AL-BALAH, Gaza Strip — The doctors gave Shaimaa Nabahin an impossible choice: lose your left leg or risk death.

The 22-year-old had been hospitalized in Gaza for around a week, after her ankle was partially severed in an Israeli airstrike, when doctors told her she was suffering from blood poisoning. Nabahin chose to maximize her chances of survival, and agreed to have her leg amputated 15 centimeters (6 inches) below the knee.

The decision upended life for the ambitious university student, as it has for untold others among the more than 54,500 war-wounded who faced similar gut-wrenching choices.

“My whole life has changed,” said Nabahin, speaking from her bed at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. “If I want to take a step or go anywhere, I need help.”

The World Health Organization and the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza say amputations have become commonplace during the Israel-Hamas war, now in its 12th week, but could not offer precise figures. At the hospital in Deir al-Balah, dozens of recent amputees are in various stages of treatment and recovery.

Experts believe that in some cases, limbs could have been saved with proper treatment. But after weeks of Israel’s blistering air and ground offensive, only nine out of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are still operational. They are greatly overcrowded, offer limited treatment and lack basic equipment to perform surgeries. Many wounded are unable to reach the remaining hospitals, pinned down by Israeli bombardment and ground combat.

Sean Casey, a WHO official who recently visited several hospitals in Gaza, said the acute lack of vascular surgeons — the first responders to trauma injuries and best positioned to save limbs — is increasing the likelihood of amputations.

But also in many cases, he said, the severe nature of the injuries means some limbs are not salvageable, and need to be removed as soon as possible.

“People may die of the infections that they have because their limbs are infected,” Casey told a news conference last week. “We saw patients who were septic.”

Israel declared war after Hamas militants stormed across the border on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 240 hostages. Israel has vowed to keep up the fight until Hamas is destroyed and removed from power in Gaza and all the hostages are freed. More than 20,600 Palestinians have been killed in the fighting, about 70% of them women and children, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and combatants among the dead.

Before the war, Gaza’s health system was overwhelmed after years of conflict and a border blockade enforced by Israel and Egypt in response to the 2007 Hamas takeover of the territory. In 2018 and 2019, thousands were wounded by Israeli army fire in weekly Hamas-led anti-blockade protests, and more than 120 of the wounded had limbs amputated.

Even then, Gaza amputees had a hard time getting prostheses that would help them return to an active life.

Those joining the ranks of amputees now face near-impossible conditions. Some 85% of the population of 2.3 million have been displaced, crowding into tents, schools-turned-shelters or homes of relatives. Water, food and other basic supplies are scarce.

On Nov. 13, when an Israeli airstrike hit the home of Nabahin’s neighbor in Bureij, an urban refugee camp in central Gaza, her ankle and arteries in her leg were partially severed by a clump of cement that blew into her home from the explosion next door. She was the only one of her family who was injured, while a number of her neighbors were killed, she said.

She was quickly taken to nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, where doctors managed to sew up her leg and and stop the bleeding.

But after that, Nabahin said she received minimal treatment or attention from doctors, who were dealing with a growing number of critically wounded people amid dwindled medical supplies. Days later, her leg turned a dark color, she said.

“They discovered that there was … shrapnel that was poisoning my blood,” she said.

The amputation went well, but Nabahin said she remains in acute pain and can’t sleep without sedatives.

Jourdel Francois, an orthopedic surgeon with Doctors Without Borders, says the risk of post-op infections in war-stricken Gaza is high. Francois, who worked at Nasser Hospital in the southern town of Khan Younis in November, said hygiene was poor, mainly because of scarce water and the general chaos in a hospital that’s overwhelmed with patients while hosting thousands of displaced civilians.

He recalled a young girl whose legs had been crushed and urgently needed a double amputation, but she couldn’t be booked into surgery that day because of the high number of other critical injuries. She died later that night, Francois said, likely from sepsis, or blood poisoning by bacteria.

“There are 50 (injured) people arriving every day, you have to make a choice,” he told The Associated Press by phone after leaving Gaza.

At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, many of the new amputees struggle to get to grips with how the loss of limb has changed their lives. Nawal Jaber, 54, had both legs amputated after she was injured on Nov. 22, when an Israeli bombardment hit her neighbor’s empty house and damaged her house in Bureij. Her grandson was killed, and her husband and son were wounded, she said.

“I wish I could meet the needs of my children, (but) I am unable,” the mother of eight said, with tears streaming down her face.

Before the conflict, Nabahin had started her degree in international relations in Gaza and planned to travel to Germany to continue her studies.

She said her goal now is to get out of Gaza, to “save what is left of me, and to install a prosthetic limb and live my life normally.”

 

 

 

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GAZA STRIP - Gaza’s government media office says the number of journalists and media workers who have been killed since October 7 now stands at 86.

The office published the names of those who it said have been “assassinated” by Israel in an attempt to “stifle the truth”.

Among those killed are 10 female journalists.

It is the worse catastrophe for journalists since the Second World War.

 

 

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By Nidal Al-Mughrabi

CAIRO - A senior Hamas official accused Israeli forces on Friday of carrying out a "heinous crime against innocent civilians" after images of Palestinian men stripped to their underwear in Gaza circulated on social media.

Izzat El-Reshiq, who is in exile abroad, urged international human rights organisations to intervene to show what happened to the men and help secure their release.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said it was concerned by the images and that all detainees must be treated with humanity and dignity in accordance with international humanitarian law.

Israeli TV showed footage on Thursday, which Reuters could not independently verify, of what it said were captured Hamas fighters, stripped to their underwear with heads bowed sitting in a Gaza City street.

"We are talking about individuals who are apprehended in Jabalia and Shejaiya (in Gaza city), Hamas strongholds and centres of gravity," Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy told a regular briefing in response to a question about the images.

"We are talking about military-age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago."

The Israeli military has been advising civilians to leave areas in Gaza where it plans to operate after launching its campaign to eliminate Hamas in the Palestinian enclave following the Islamist militant group's Oct. 7 killing spree in Israel.

One photo showed more than 20 men kneeling on the pavement or in the street, with Israeli soldiers looking on and dozens of shoes and sandals abandoned in the road. A similar number of men, also semi-naked, were crammed into the back of a truck nearby.

Some Palestinians said they recognised relatives in the images circulating on social media and denied they had any links to Hamas or any other group.

Reshiq said the men had been captured at a school in Gaza that was being used as a shelter after weeks of Israeli bombardments that have displaced many Gazans.


APPEAL TO HUMAN RIGHTS GROUPS


Hamas held Israeli forces responsible for the lives and safety of the detained men, Reshiq added.

"And we urge human rights organizations to immediately intervene to expose this heinous crime against innocent civilians taking refuge in a school, that had turned into a shelter because of Zionist aggression and massacres, and to put pressure by all means to secure their release."

The London-based Arabic language news outlet Al-Araby Al-Jadeed said one of the men detained was its correspondent Diaa Kahlout. "Al-Araby Al-Jadeed strongly condemns the humiliating arrest of colleague Diaa Al-Kahlout and other civilians," it said, urging the international community and rights groups to denounce the arrest of journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists also called for his release.

Some Palestinians identified the place where the men were captured as the northeastern town of Beit Lahia, an area that Israel had warned civilians to leave and has been encircled and besieged by Israeli tanks for weeks.

Hani Almadhoun, a Palestinian American based in Virginia, said he saw relatives in one image and told Reuters they were "innocent civilians with no links to Hamas or any other faction".

"We strongly emphasize the importance of treating all those detained with humanity and dignity, in accordance with international humanitarian law," Jessica Moussan, ICRC Media Relations Advisor, Middle East, said in a statement.

Husam Zomlot, head of the Palestinian Mission in London, said on X the images evoked "some of humanity’s darkest passages of history."

Prominent Palestinian politician Hanan Ashrawi said on X the incident was "blatant attempt at the humiliation & degradation of Palestinian men, abducted from their family homes, stripped & displayed like war trophies".

 

 

 

 

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By Paul Adams

JERUSALEM - With fighting raging around Khan Younis and in the north of Gaza, a video has emerged on social media showing dozens of Palestinian men detained by Israel.

The footage, verified by the BBC, shows them stripped to their underwear, kneeling on the ground and being guarded by Israeli soldiers.

The men are thought to have been arrested in Beit Lahia, in the far north of the Gaza strip.

The BBC has been told some of the men have since been released.

Asked about the video, a spokesman for the Israeli government told the BBC the men detained were all of military age and had been "discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago".

In the video, dozens of men are lined up on a pavement and appear to have been told to remove their shoes, which are scattered across the road. Israeli soldiers and armoured vehicles are standing guard over them.

Other images show them being transported in military trucks. In the Israeli media, the captives are being described as Hamas fighters who have surrendered.

Another image - which has not yet been verified by the BBC - shows men blindfolded, kneeling in what appears to be a large pit of bulldozed sand.

The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has not directly commented on the images, but spokesman Daniel Hagari said on Thursday that "IDF fighters and Shin Bet officers detained and interrogated hundreds of terror suspects".

"Many of them also turned themselves in to our forces during the past 24 hours. The intelligence coming out of their interrogations is utilised to continue the fighting."

On Friday, Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy told the BBC the men had been detained in Jabalia and Shejaiya in northern Gaza, which he described as "Hamas strongholds and centres of gravity".

"We're talking about military age men who were discovered in areas that civilians were supposed to have evacuated weeks ago," he said.

Mr Levy added that they would be questioned to "work out who indeed was a Hamas terrorist and who is not".

He emphasised the detained men had been found in areas where Israeli forces had engaged in "close-quarter combat" with Hamas. They had been "deliberately disguising themselves as civilians" and operating from civilian buildings.

One well-known Palestinian journalist, Diaa al-Kahlout, a correspondent for al-Araby al-Jadeed, has been identified among those being held.

The Arabic language news outlet, which also publishes in English under the name the New Arab, said Mr al-Kahlout had been arrested along with his brothers, relatives and "other civilians" by Israeli forces in Beit Lahia.

Al-Araby al-Jadeed has condemned what it describes as the "humiliating" detention of Mr al-Kahlout on Thursday.

It added that soldiers forced the men to remove their clothes and "subjected them to invasive searches and humiliating treatment upon their arrest, prior to transporting them to undisclosed locations".

The outlet "urges the international community, journalists' rights defenders and watchdogs, and human rights bodies to denounce this ongoing assault" by Israel on journalists in the territory.

The BBC has asked the IDF about Mr al-Kahlout's reported detention.

To watch the video.visit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-67659296

 

 

 

 

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