By Kareem Fahim, Louisa Loveluck, Claire Parker, Hazem Balousha and Hajar Harb, The Washington PostPalestinian medics treat a girl wounded in the Israeli bombardment of the Gaza Strip at the Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah refugee camp, southern Gaza, Tuesday, May 7, 2024. The city’s largest hospital was shuttered two days ago, in a panic, after Israel ordered 100,000 Palestinians in southeastern Gaza to evacuate.
Israel has called its operations “limited.” Doctors said it was nothing of the sort, as munitions fell on an area smaller than the Istanbul Airport complex, packed with more than a million people.
The cheering could still be heard Monday evening as ambulances started arriving at the European Hospital in Rafah, said Mohammed Abdelfattah, a Palestinian American doctor from California who is volunteering there. He walked to the emergency room and saw an infant girl, “with pink toenails and little feet, with the breathing tube.” She had suffered “severe trauma” from a strike.
“These medical points are in underserved displacement camps and are the only access to health care many people have.” Two young women he treated last week - a 16-year-old and an 18-year-old - died as a “direct result of malnutrition,” he said. There will “far more of that in the coming months.”