Surgeon describes experience treating patients during Israeli bombardment of Gaza

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• Geoff Bennett:

  America's top two defense officials are in Israel today with a dual message: The U.S. supports Israel and its right to self-defense, but it must stop killing so many Gaza civilians and focus its operations.

  The war continues at a brutal pace, with hundreds killed this past weekend, and some of Israel's closest European allies now pressing for a cease-fire.

  Hamas today released a new propaganda video showing three elderly male Israeli hostages still in captivity. One man speaking in the video identifies himself as 79-year-old Chaim Peri, who was abducted by Hamas from his Kibbutz Nir Oz home on October 7.

  Israeli media identified the other two hostages as fellow Nir Oz residents 84-year-old Amiram Cooper and Yoram Metzger, age 80. The hostages are heard pleading for Israel's help in securing their release in the video, which the "NewsHour" is not showing, as it's not clear when it was recorded or under what conditions.

  That's as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made his second visit to the region today since the start of the war, this time urging Israel to transition from its intense bombing campaign in Gaza to a more surgical ground operation.

  Lloyd Austin, U.S. Secretary of Defense: This is Israel's operation, and I'm not here to dictate timelines or terms. We also have some great thoughts about how to transition from high-intensity operations to lower-intensity and more surgical operations.

• Geoff Bennett:

  The U.K. and Germany today joined a growing list of European allies who are now calling for a cease-fire. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing to fight until the end.

• Yoav Gallant, Israeli Defense Minister:

  There is no clock that is running.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Israel's defense minister today remained defiant.

• Yoav Gallant:

  We need to get to different performances on the ground before we move to the next phase.

• Geoff Bennett:

  With each day that passes, the humanitarian situation in Gaza grows increasingly dire. The United Nations' food agency estimates 56 percent of Gaza's households are experiencing severe hunger. Displaced Palestinians are struggling just to get the basic necessities.

• Eyad Hellis, Displaced Gazan (through interpreter):

  Our life is tragic, very hard. The situation is very difficult. Sometimes, we run out of water by the evening and the kids have to sleep thirsty until the sun rises, and we can go out to fill up again.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Several more trucks could be seen carrying humanitarian aid through the Rafah Crossing today from Egypt, but not nearly enough to respond to the crisis.

  For Palestinians in Gaza, it was another day shrouded by the fog of war. This was the scene moments after an airstrike pummeled the Nuseirat refugee camp in Central Gaza, a race to rescue survivors.

  Witnesses say Israel attacked the camp last night and again this morning, killing at least 25 people.

• Man (through interpreter):

  Rescue teams are still trying to get a huge number of martyrs out from under the rubble. This is our situation.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Elsewhere, in Central Gaza, body bags pile up outside Al-Aqsa Hospital. Loved ones of the victims gathered in prayer and disbelief.

  And prayers were also held over the weekend for the slain Al-Jazeera cameraman Samer Abudaqa, his mother bidding a final goodbye. He was killed by what is believed to be an Israeli drone strike while reporting on the bombing of a school in Southern Gaza. Israel says it does not deliberately target journalists. Abudaqa is one of at least 90 journalists killed since October 7.

  Dozens came out to pay him tribute on Saturday, including Al-Jazeera bureau chief Wael al-Dahdouh, who survived the attack? His wife, son, daughter and grandson were all killed in an Israeli airstrike at the end of October.

• Wael AL-Dihdouh, Al-Jazeera Bureau Chief (through interpreter):

  We were targeted in a direct way, but it was God's will That I got injured and that Samer was martyred.

• Geoff Bennett:

  Israel is also denying claims that an Israeli sniper on Saturday targeted the sole Catholic Church in Gaza, killing two Palestinian women who were sheltering inside.

  Tal Heinrich, Spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister: The IDF only targets terrorist and terror infrastructure.

• Geoff Bennett:

  On Sunday, Pope Francis condemned the killings, adding this:

  Pope Francis, Leader of Catholic Church (through interpreter): Some say this is terrorism. This is war. Yes, it is war. It is terrorism.

• Geoff Bennett:

  The health system in Gaza has collapsed. Roughly 75 percent of the hospitals there are no longer operational. Those that are open lack crucial medical supplies and are overcrowded and understaffed.

  Amna Nawaz recently spoke with Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British-Palestinian surgeon who spent a month-and-a-half in Gaza tending to people at the peak of the Israeli bombing campaign.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Dr. Abu-Sittah, welcome to the "NewsHour." And thank you so much for joining us.

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, British-Palestinian Surgeon:

  Thank you.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So, as the war broke out, you went into Gaza to help with medical support in any way you could. It's not the first time that you have done that.

  Just explain to us, help us understand, what compelled you to go? Why did you go?

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  By the evening of the 7th of October, by — and Sunday morning, I knew that what was coming to Gaza was absolutely going to be calamitous and that there was going to be a need to support the medical teams there.

  I had been involved in a training program and setting up a residency program for plastic surgeons in Gaza in the year leading up to the war. And I kind of knew what the capabilities were and what the capacity in the system was. And that made me realize that it was critical that I would go, because there was a shortage of plastic surgeons, particularly in Gaza.

• Amna Nawaz:

  And how did what you saw on the ground line up with what you expected to see?

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  Well, it was the difference between a flood and a tsunami.

  Everything that I had seen, not just in Gaza before, but even in Yemen and Iraq and Syria, it was nothing compared to what we witnessed and what is still going on in Gaza. The size, the magnitude of the killing, the ferocity of the violence is astounding. It's beyond what I have seen in 30 years of warfare.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Doctor, we as journalists have had to screen much of the footage that comes through and try to figure out how to verify it, what to bring to our audience.

  You were living through it during a really intense Israeli bombing campaign. Can you help us understand what you saw? What stays with you? What were those scenes like?

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  It's just absolute carnage, when you go to the emergency department and just waves upon waves of the dead and the wounded come in, so many children, so many children.

  I was operating daily on 10 to 12 patients, and 50 percent were kids, kids with horrific injuries, life-altering facial injuries. And there was one night, one horrendous night, that I did amputations on six children. And it was every day that you felt that this was a war on children.

  The number of pediatric amputations in Gaza as a result of this war is around 1,000. Just the sheer number overwhelms you. And even in a good day, when you feel that you have managed to do as much as you physically can at the end of what most days was 18 hours of solid work, in each of these air raids, 80 to 150 wounded would come in.

  And what you did was — just seemed so infinitesimal.

• Amna Nawaz:

  As the supplies ran out, as the aid was blocked, what kind of choices did that force you and other medical suppliers on the ground to make?

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  Initially, one had to improvise on replacing much-needed material.

  At the very beginning, we started running out of antiseptic solution. And I kind of made up this cocktail of washing-up liquid and vinegar and water to clean the wound. But, as things got worse, you were having to perform really painful procedures on — without antiseptic.

  But the most difficult thing is, as the capacity of the system dwindled, triaging patients became extremely difficult, prioritizing who goes to the operating rooms and who doesn't, who gets operated on and who doesn't. Where do you make the cutoff point of what is savable and what is not savable?

  That became the most difficult of all choices. People with head injuries were left to die. People with major burns, we couldn't save, and you every day made even more and more difficult life-and-death decisions.

• Amna Nawaz:

  You were also at Al Shifa Hospital, right, the biggest hospital in North Gaza. The Israeli forces did enter that. They said that that hospital, there was evidence, they said, that it was a Hamas command-and-control center. They showed weapons and uniforms they said prove that.

  It did beg the question among a lot of people who saw the evidence. If it's not a place Hamas is operating from, why are those weapons there? What do you have to say about all of that?

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  Anybody who's had an MRI can testify to the stupidity of what we saw is the presence of a machine gun magazine next to an MRI machine.

  Anybody who's had an MRI who's repeatedly told to take even small rings and earrings and necklaces, it shows, had there been what the Israelis were saying, you would still be having teams of embedded journalists being taken on tour in these great command-and-control centers.

  This narrative of Shifa aimed to actually distract from the fact that, while they were talking about Shifa, they destroyed four pediatric hospitals. While they were talking about Shifa, they bombed the cancer hospital. While they were talking about Shifa, they dismantled the whole of the health system in Northern Gaza, with the aim of making Gaza an uninhabitable place to dismantle all of the components of life, water and sewage, bakeries, schools, universities.

  And you turn it into a death world, where life cannot exist, and those who are left behind have to eventually leave for the sake of their children.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Dr. Abu-Sittah, everyone we speak to says there's no safe place in Gaza. Yourself, I believe, have lost colleagues.

  We know a number of medical professionals have been killed trying to help as well. What about now? Will you return to Gaza at some point?

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  Absolutely.

  The only reason I left was because we had run out of the basic supplies, and I became redundant as a surgeon. I couldn't get my patients to the operating room. The last few days, I was just bandaging people up with serious wounds.

  If there is a cease-fire which allows medical supplies, medication to go in, which allows us to at least increase the capacity of the health system so that we can, as surgeons, operate on over 50,000 wounded, I would be back in Gaza in a heartbeat.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That is Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah joining us tonight.

  Doctor, thank you so much for your time.

• Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah:

  Thank you.