Doctors struggle under Israeli attacks | News, Sports, Jobs

Palestinian Mahmoud Mikdad holds the body of his 21-month-old child Yaman, who was killed in the Israeli bombing of the Gaza Strip, in the morgue of a hospital in Deir al-Balah on Tuesday. The Associated Press

Dr. Hassan Hamdan was one of the few trained plastic surgeons in Gaza and a specialist in wound healing. His skills were urgently needed when Israel’s military onslaught filled hospitals with patients who had been torn apart by explosions and shrapnel. The 65-year-old came out of retirement to help.

Earlier this month, he, his wife, son, two daughters, a daughter-in-law, a son-in-law, six grandchildren and one other person were killed in an Israeli airstrike as his family sought shelter in their home in an Israeli-declared “safety zone.”

Israel’s nine-month war in Gaza has decimated the territory’s health system. Israeli attacks have physically destroyed hospitals, and health facilities have been targeted by airstrikes and have had to be evacuated. But the Israeli offensive has also hit Gaza’s medical staff hard. According to the UN, more than 500 health workers have been killed since October, either in attacks on hospitals or in attacks on homes.

Israel says it is targeting Hamas, which it says has infiltrated the health system and uses hospitals as military command centers and ambulances to transport fighters. Health workers in the Gaza Strip deny that accusation.

Many of those killed in the Israeli campaign were specialists like Hamdan.

Dr Ahmed al-Maqadma, also a reconstructive surgeon and former fellow at the UK Royal College, was found shot dead along with his mother, a general practitioner, on a street outside Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in April after Israeli forces stormed the facility for two weeks.

One of Gaza’s best-known fertility doctors, Omar Ferwana, was killed along with his family in an attack on his home in October. The area’s only liver transplant doctor, Hamam Alloh, was killed in an attack on his home in Gaza City.

Three doctors, including two from Doctors Without Borders, were killed when a tank attacked a hospital in northern Gaza during a siege in November. They are among six employees of the international aid organization who died in the Israeli offensive.

Israel has arrested doctors and medical personnel. At least two of them have died in Israeli custody, allegedly from mistreatment: the head of Shifa’s orthopedic department, Adnan al-Bursh, and the head of a women’s hospital, Iyad al-Rantisi. Israel has not returned the bodies of the two men.

Their deaths not only claim personal lives, but also deprive the medical system in the Gaza Strip of skills that are now indispensable.

Since Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7, which killed around 1,200 people and kidnapped 250, Israel’s attacks in Gaza have killed over 38,000 people and injured over 88,000, according to local health officials. Malnutrition and disease are widespread as hundreds of thousands of civilians are crammed into tent camps.

Dr. Adam Hamawy, a former U.S. Army plastic surgeon who volunteered in Gaza in May, said Hamdan’s death “leaves a huge void that will be difficult to fill.”

Like many others in Gaza, he believes Israel is deliberately destroying the health system. Israel has besieged, raided and occupied at least eight hospitals, caused severe destruction and attacked medical convoys and ambulances.

Twenty-three of Gaza’s 36 hospitals are out of service, and the rest are only partially functioning, according to the latest UN figures. Only five of nine field hospitals are operational. More than 60 percent of Gaza’s primary health care facilities are closed.