Gaza doctors are starving while fighting to save lives, evacuated medic tells BBC

For two decades, his job and his goal in life was the healing of people. But Dr. Muhammad Abu Al -Maghawisib also wanted to survive.

Therefore, when he could no longer take care of himself, and hunger was too much, he took a rare opportunity to leave Gaza.

“I never imagined hunger.”

“But my head was injured and caused to my stomach pain.”

After working without stopping in hospitals throughout Gaza over the past two years, Dr. Abu Mogaisib has been evacuated to Ireland in mid -September, along with a group of students receiving scholarships.

Safe and nourish, and he is now able to think about his time working in increasingly increasingly conditions as Israel destroyed the medical structure and other critical infrastructure – and how he feels to leave colleagues behind them.

“The decision was very difficult,” he told me, sitting in a quiet garden in Dublin – with Birdsong soundtrack, instead of bullets, drones and explosions.

The contradiction between the two worlds was almost overwhelming for him.

“I am physically here, but my heart and my soul in Gaza,” he said. “It is very strange to see people who live a normal life, and it will take time to get used to.”

“I am happy because I am surviving. Because I was killed or wounded at any time. But I am sad because I left behind my colleagues and my people.”

Dr. Abu Mugayeb was responsible for the operations of the International Charitable Corporation in the Gaza Strip, including all hospitals, clinics and mental health services. It is one of the largest medical service providers in Gaza.

He has struggled to put “indescribable” words on the consequences of his colleagues during the past two years of the war, while leaving Israel offensive in Gaza under severe pressure, while forcing some to close and others who are working at significantly reduced levels.

Tell me about the paramedics who were forced to determine the glucose solution just to give a little energy to continue the work.

At one point, between doctors and nurses, the only topic of the conversation in the hospital was food, and the desperate hunt for that. “The hungry doctors were treating malnutrition,” he said.

The wound is wounded only.

He told me: “When you enter the hospital, the smell of blood smells.”

“Hospitals are supposed to be sacred places, sterile places, but in Gaza, it is similar to going to a public market. Patients literally lie on the ground because there is no family for them.

“Not enough doctors to take care of them. In the intensive care unit, they are waiting for someone to die, to admit another important patient.”

“I hope that one day, you can reach what is happening in these hospitals in Gaza. It is terrible.”

Foreign journalists By Israel from entering Gaza Independently, news organizations, including the BBC, depend on the trusted local independents for a report from the Earth.

The 52 -year -old doctor has lost the number of times he was subjected to unity since the beginning of the war that Israel launched in response to Hamas’s attacks on October 7, 2023.

He said that these attacks were “completely unacceptable” and shocked it.

He said that his large house in Gaza City – which had a barbecue and picnic table on the grass – was seized as an Israeli military base and then looted by the locals.

Dr. Abu Muguisib managed to evacuate his family to Egypt in February 2024, while he remained behind him.

“I lived in a tent. I lived in the hospital. I lived in the office of MSF. I put my butterfly in the electricity room in a restaurant.”

But wherever he is, he continues to work.

Fear was accompanied by everywhere. “Every time I was walking on the street, I felt very terrified and looked around, and stare at people, because I did not know who was Hamas,” he said.

And I thought, well, this man, maybe he wanted, maybe they are [Israel] It will target it. They will kill everyone around it. “

Bringing every day moral dilemmas on how to treat the injured.

“Which patient admitted? You decide that you can not only take children, but they are mostly children, so what do you prefer in it?”

“The situation is beyond the description,” he added.

More than 18,000 out of 66,000 people recorded by the Hamas Ministry of Health who were killed during the war. The United Nations considers these numbers reliable.

While Israel continues its attack in Gaza City, the United Nations says that the attacks on and around hospitals have left patients and civilians wounded with anywhere to go to life -saving treatment.

According to the United Nations Office for Human Rights, there were at least 17 Israeli attacks in or near health facilities in Gaza in the second part of September alone.

Dr. Abu Mugayeb said: “There were no signs that they were targeting Hamas only.” “They are civilians, residents, I, my friends, my colleagues, my neighbors, are not enthusiasm.

“We are the ones who were killed, wounded, escaped from one place to another and starved.”

Israel says it takes steps to reduce civil losses and blame Hamas for using civilians as human shields.

Dr. Abu Al -Maghawiseb said he knows that Israel’s revenge for the October 7 attacks will be huge. But he never imagined his size, describing him as “an attack on every class of life in Gaza, from infrastructure, electricity, water supplies, sewage system, hospitals, schools and universities.”

He told me that people in Gaza are so desperate that they will die for their elderly relatives to spare them more suffering.

“I have colleagues who are still under the rubble,” he said.

At least 13 employees of MSF have been killed over the past two years. The last of which was a nurse died of shrapnel from an Israeli air strike near his tent in September.

He now believed in the war in Gaza, Dr. Abu Mugayeb enjoyed his first suitable shower in almost two years.

But after a dream for weeks about eating, and now that there was food around him, he has no appetite.

“Of course, I’m happy because I left. But I don’t enjoy this happiness. When I know my colleagues are suffering, I can’t have a suitable meal.”

He left Gaza with his mobile phone only and the clothes he was wearing. Not anything else was allowed.

He was told that the Israelis were strictly banned from those who were evacuated from taking any sand or land from Gaza.

He is convinced that this was for some reason: “Therefore, there is no evidence that you are from Gaza. You do not have links with Gaza. You don’t have the memories of Gaza.”

“I wanted to take all Gaza with me,” he said. “Not only a little.”

He said that the destruction in Gaza is so large that the cities he passed through while leaving through the border crossing with Egypt were not fully known.

I asked him if he believed that Gaza would heal.

He replied, “It will be very difficult.”

“The wounds are not only physical. They are social, psychological, emotional and spiritual.

“Everything is lost.”

He said that healing would take a long time.

“I think people will need the world’s support for their healing.”

Adogen Anderson