Medical staff recount arrests, killings at al-Shifa Hospital

March 21, 2024 - 1:58

Emergency surgeon Mads Gilbert, who worked at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital during previous wars, has shared in an interview with Al Jazeera the harrowing details provided by his former colleagues at the medical compound after Israel’s latest raid.

“Medical staff have been arrested and left for hours in the cold,” the Norwegian physician said. The Israeli army scanned their faces with a camera and took them for what they described as “humiliating investigations”, he added.

“Some were forced to leave the hospital and taken to unknown places. Others were displaced to the south half naked,” Gilbert said. “One doctor was shot in the chest when he followed the orders to leave the hospital and later went into surgery at al-Ahli Arab Hospital.”

Gilbert also said the Israeli army in its “repeated attacks” does not differentiate “between fighters and medical staff, patients and refugees”.

He said that as a result of Monday’s raid, al-Shifa Hospital was again nonoperational, putting at risk the lives of Palestinians in northern Gaza, where starvation, lack of water and disease are life-threatening in addition to the war.

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