ShareKUWAIT: Ghassan Abu Sitta, a plastic surgeon specializing in conflict injuries, recalled the overwhelming terror that he witnessed while volunteering in Gaza hospitals since the beginning of the Zionist aggression, at a symposium hosted by the Kuwait Committee for Jerusalem on Wednesday. Abu Sitta, who was born in Kuwait and is based in London, started recounting how he spent his days trying to save the people of Gaza, mostly at Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and Al-Shifa Medical Complex. According to him, the Zionist entity’s ruthless Gaza bombing not only started by killing people and destroying buildings, but completely wiping out entire neighborhoods.
“Since the victory of October 7, I saw a cruel war coming, but I never expected it to become a genocidal war,” he said, lamenting how people’s lives were very easily lost. “We could smell the decomposing dead bodies trapped under the buildings,” Abu Sitta said. He vividly described how the massive bombings resulted in severe injuries in victims who were transferred by countless numbers of ambulances arriving at the hospital every one to two minutes, carrying more than six patients in each, exceeding the 600-bed capacity of Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza. Abu Sitta noted the highest rate of casualties was among children, most of whom also lost their parents in the conflict. “This was the moment I realized that this war was unlike any war that I have ever witnessed before,” he said, referring to multiple war zones he has worked in, including Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon.
Abu Sitta spoke of the deadly weapons the Zionists used against Palestinians, resulting in injuries that were beyond their expectations, referring to Hellfire missiles, which “disintegrate into shards of metal that cause the largest possible number of injuries and amputations”. The use of deadly weapons extended to the phosphorus shells, which he explained cause deep chemical burns from the surface of the body until the internal organs.
“Just like a drill, the phosphorus substance keeps penetrating to the deepest parts of the body, reaching tissues, bones and even the intestines,” he said. Dealing with these types of wounds was very challenging during operations, as whenever the wound got exposed to air, the phosphorus ignited spontaneously as it reacted with oxygen. During the operation, the surgeon’s assistant had to keep pouring water to stop the fire,” Abu Sitta said.
Day by day, with the constant bombing of hospitals, increasing number of casualties and scarcity of medical resources, the situation got worse. “Only two operation rooms were functioning, and we were just two surgeons there in front of more than 500 cases,” Abu Sitta recalled. Unfortunately, many of these cases were left untreated for more than four days, which resulted in infections in their wounds, causing blood poisoning and eventually leading to death, he said.
Even the cases that were treated under very harsh conditions, as when the wound healing material ran out, the doctors replaced it with vinegar and used dishwashing detergents to clean the wounds. Not only this, but they also ran out of drugs and painkillers. “It was the toughest moment in my career history, as I was left with no choice but to conduct surgical operations on children and adults without giving them anesthesia, because the other option was to leave them to die.”
Even after the surgery, their pain was never relieved, as the only painkiller available was paracetamol, which was not effective enough. Following intense bombing of hospitals of Gaza, Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital and Al-Shifa Medical Complex stopped functioning completely and turned into mass graves, Abu Sitta noted.
With the lack of basic resources, including food and water, malnutrition took over. So, if people didn’t die from the bombings or the ineffective medical treatment, they were going to die from malnutrition, especially during the cold weather conditions that resulted in the spread of diseases, Abu Sitta said. This is when it dawned on him that the point of the war was not for the sake of any political victory, but to transform Gaza into an uninhabitable place during and after the war.
“Basically, the Zionists’ plan is to achieve with a ceasefire what they failed to achieve in war. They only use it as a chance to continue the slow killing,” he said. Over time, the situation escalated to entire families being wiped out of the civil registry, Abu Sitta said. With that being said, and despite all attempts by the Zionist entity to defeat the resistance of Palestinian people, he was impressed by how they stood together in solidarity against death and helped one another amid the despair and lack of resources. He referred to moments where people didn’t hesitate to share with others the last piece of bread or even the last medication pill.
Abu Sitta recalled being touched by a painful memory of a three-year-old boy who lost both his parents and was too young to recognize his own name. “I saw him sleeping in the arms of a woman who was feeding him just like her other kids. I learned later she adopted him without even knowing his name.” After 43 days of enduring these conditions, Abu Sitta made the decision to return to his family in the UK, as he could no longer bear conducting such ineffective operations. “When I got out of the boundaries of the Palestinian health system for the first time, I could clearly see that the life that I knew in this place has ceased to exist,” he said.
