“Every day we say today was the worst ever, tomorrow turns out to be even worse,” says Sara Al Saqqa, a young surgeon at al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility from Gaza. Al-Shifa Hospital is overflowing with the living and the dead, so Sara rushes from one patient to the next, giving each person only a few minutes. “We treat patients on the floor, on stretchers or in the hallways. There are not enough operating or recovery rooms and people have died because we have nowhere to accommodate them for treatment,” she adds.
Men, women and children are among the injured. Some cry, others tremble or sleep on makeshift beds placed on the ground. When asked what the hardest part of his job is, Al Saqqa says it’s the children.
“I cannot tolerate the suffering of children. I can’t even tolerate them crying. I didn’t go to pediatrics because I didn’t want to feel so helpless in front of crying children,” she adds.
In nearly a month of Israeli attack on Gaza, at least 10,000 Palestinians have been killed, including 4,880 children, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. The morgue at al-Shifa Hospital has reached maximum capacity and outside the main building a tent has been set up to store the bodies. “Yesterday they were placed in refrigerators used to store frozen chicken,” said Ahmed Hijazi, a Palestinian content creator. “Can you imagine how tragic this is?” he adds.
Before the Israeli assault on Gaza, Hijazi used his social media presence to show the world the beauty of Gaza, despite the blockade. Today, his focus is now on recording history. It documents the aftermath of Israeli bombings: mothers suffering, children trembling in agony, exhausted doctors operating with flashlights. Ahmed also witnessed the airstrike on an ambulance right outside the gates of al-Shifa hospital: “I am filming from the ambulance so that Israel cannot pretend that it is not bombing civilians… I want let the world see the scale of the massacres. be committed against humanity.
Credits
A film by: Tierney Bonini and Real Gaza Productions
Director of Photography: Real Gaza Productions
Editors: Antonia Perello and Catherine Hallinan
Deputy editor: Ahmad Samara
Sound editor and mixer: Linus Bergman
Executive producer: Tierney Bonini
Editor-in-chief: Donald Cameron