This story contains highly distressing content about injuries and fatalities.
Two Australian doctors volunteering in Gaza say they fear for their lives amid constant Israeli attacks around the hospital they are working in, and threatening text messages warning them they’ll soon be arrested.
Gold Coast general physician Dr Nada Abu Alrub and Brisbane anaesthetist Dr Saya Aziz are operating in one of Gaza’s last functioning hospitals, al-Shifa, as part of a humanitarian mission for the Palestinian Australian NZ Medical Association.
The pair have been in the war-torn territory for the past 10 days and were earlier forced to leave another hospital, al-Aqsa in Gaza City, after intensified Israeli bombardment in the area.
Speaking to SBS News, Aziz said she was not prepared for the “horror” of what she has seen since arriving in the besieged territory.
The two Australian doctors said they have received threatening messages in the past few days. Credit: TikTok
“It’s doomsday. You walk in, and it’s like an abattoir,” Aziz said.
The Queensland anaesthetist said the under-resourced hospital was overflowing with patients and dealing with complex cases without proper equipment or sanitation.
As she spoke with SBS News inside the hospital, Aziz was constantly batting away flies.
“There’s people who’ve had, you know, craniotomies, bits of no skull, that are laying there. Children are dying of cardiac arrest. They couldn’t walk physically because they’ve had gastro, vomiting, malnourished for months on end. You walk around and your heart breaks. Everyone is thin, is exhausted,” she said.
“I can’t burst out crying in front of them. I have to keep it together, because they’re keeping it together.
“You can’t even begin to call it a hospital. It’s a place where people are left to die.”
Dr Nada Abu Alrub treating a patient in Gaza. Credit: Supplied
Aziz said the most shocking case she treated was a male patient who she found “mangled”. It was her first amputation case.
“I walked into the recess area, and I didn’t know … where to look. It was a bloodbath,” she said.
“There was … mangled legs, mangled arms, and then, to my horror, the patient was alive.”
Aziz said she thought the case was “hopeless” but managed to resuscitate him.
She said patients are arriving with blast injuries from what appeared to be sophisticated weaponry.
“They call it the belts of fire. And I think it’s an F-35 (fighter jet) that comes and drops all these bombs and it shreds them to pieces, let alone when the ground shakes with the remote-controlled robotic tanks,” she said.
“I don’t know what weapons they’re using, but they’re shredding them to pieces.”
Dr Nada Abu Al Rub posted a video about an orphaned boy she said was in the Gaza hospital without any surviving family members to look after him. Credit: Supplied
Alrub described performing a cesarean on a nine-month pregnant woman who had arrived at the hospital without a head.
She said the baby survived and was transferred to another hospital, but without neonatal intensive care facilities, she’s unsure if the baby is okay.
“This is just one of the examples — we see more horrific things than this,” Alrub said.
“They arrive with a pool of blood, [it’s] a slaughterhouse. People kind of having their limbs just hanging with a bit of skin or tendon bleeding.”
She said it’s common to see entire family units “wiped out” after a mass casualty event. Many patients who have unsurvivable injuries are left to die.
“We don’t even have painkillers to give them when we leave them to die,” Alrub said.
The doctors said they are concerned for their safety amid intensified strikes. Both said Israeli tanks were 500m away from the hospital.
“Everyone’s terrified. Throughout the night, you can’t even sleep,” Aziz said.
Both said they had received threats via their phones in recent days. Alrub said after she posted something about a doctor who was arrested, she was told she would be arrested. Aziz said she got a “threatening” text message from an Israeli number.
Israel bans foreign journalists from independently reporting in Gaza. SBS News is unable to independently verify the accounts.
Early this year, the United Nations and Palestinian monitoring group Healthcare Workers Watch both estimated more than 1,000 healthcare workers had been killed in Palestinian territories since October 2023, when Israel launched its offensive in Gaza.
The Palestinian ministry of health puts that figure at more than 1,500, according to a July memo from the UN.
Israel has denied the military targets healthcare workers and hospitals.
Gaza’s health ministry says more than 65,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive, which started after a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel in October 2023 in which 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage, according to Israeli tallies.
“Recognising Palestine after it’s been destroyed … it’s a bit too late,” she said.
Aziz said she could not describe it as a war but “a killing field”. But she said it was “not too late” to save Palestinians, urging people in Australia to “speak up” and do more.
“There is time to save Gaza,” she said.
