The injured Palestinians die due to lack of supplies, says the surgeon

WARNING: This article contains details that some readers can find anguishing

An American surgeon who has been working in two Gaza hospitals during the last three weeks has said that injured Palestinian patients have died due to the lack of equipment and supplies.

Dr. Mark Perlmutter says that doctors have had to work in operations rooms without soap, antibiotics or X -ray facilities, since Israel has resumed its offensive against Hamas in Gaza.

A 15 -year -old girl who was hit by Israeli machine gun fire while riding her bicycle was one of the many injured children that Dr. Perlmutter said she had to operate.

The Israeli government has said that the renewed attacks that its army is carrying out in Gaza aims to force Hamas to free all the remaining hostages.

Dr. Perlmutter spoke with the BBC shortly after the end of his second trip to Gaza; The first was about a year ago. Critic with Israel’s behavior in the strip, he has previously requested a weapons embargo and said that his attacks against Gaza constitute genocide, which Israel denies vehemently.

This time, he worked at the Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah in the center of the territory and then at the Nasser hospital in southern Gaza.

He has been working for Humanity Auxilium in Gaza as part of a broader program of the World Health Organization (WHO).

He was at Nasser Hospital when he was beaten by an Israeli air strike, attacked to Ismail Barhoum, Hamas’ Chief of Finance.

Hamas said Barhoum was being treated for injuries he suffered in an previous Israeli attack. The Israeli army denied this, saying that he was in the hospital “to commit acts of terrorism.”

Dr. Perlmutter told the BBC that Barhoum was in the hospital to receive additional medical treatment. He says that, as a patient at the hospital, Barhoum had the right to be protected under the Geneva Convention.

The human cost of the last Israeli offensive was exemplified for Dr. Perlmutter by two 15 -year -old young people, including the girl on the bicycle, who were brought to the operating room in each of the hospitals in which he was working, with a week of difference.

“Both were macerated and crushed by Apache Gunships,” says Dr. Perlmutter.

The girl, in her words, “will be lucky if she maintains three of her limbs.”

Dr. Perlmutter says that people on the scene told the ambulance team that brought the young woman to the hospital that was beaten by the shots of an Israeli military helicopter.

He says she had been riding her bike alone and that she arrived at the hospital without a backpack or anything else that could have aroused suspicions. The graphic images of the operational table show catastrophic wounds in the leg and arm.

The boy was driving in a car with his grandmother after receiving warnings to evacuate from the north, says Dr. Perlmutter.

“Then the car was attacked by two Apache guns. The grandmother was crushed on the scene and died,” he said.

“The boy entered his right side without his right side, the vascular repair on his left side took five hours: the nervous repair on his left side failed and had a blackened hand the next day that required an amputation at the level of his elbow: his left leg will require multiple surgeries for reconstruction and has a chest wound. He cannot have followed.”

Dr. Perlmutter has also provided graphic photos of the child’s wounds.

In a statement, Israel’s defense forces (FDI) said “it does not go to unwilling individuals.”

“The FDI operates according to international law, pointing only to military objectives while taking feasible measures to mitigate the damage to civilians,” he told the BBC.

The statement also said that the IDF had not received “sufficient information” to directly address the incidents described by Dr. Perlmutter.

“The IDF take measures to address irregular incidents that deviate from their orders. The IDF examines such incidents and takes appropriate measures when justified,” he said.

Under such conditions, Dr. Perlmutter emphasized the commitment and dedication of Palestinian medical staff, beyond the efforts of foreign doctors like him.

“The stress levels in us are not even accessible to what happens even with Palestinian medicine students who work with us, whose stress levels are crazy, such as nurses and technicians in the operating room, much less Palestinian surgeons,” he said.

“Everyone leaves their families, they are volunteers and, often, they work without pay. They work the same hours we do, and we can go home in a month, which do not have to return to the misery of their stores where there are often 50 people living in a tent built for 20 and sharing a bathroom.”

Most hospitals in Gaza are out of operation or barely manage to work. Dr. Perlmutter compared the medical facilities in Gaza with where he lives in North Carolina. There are multiple trauma centers there, but they would have been overwhelmed, he says, if they had to deal with the massive influx of victims that resulted from the first day of Israel’s resumption of his war against Hamas.

“The small community hospital, to -aqsa, is a tenth of the size of any of the facilities in my native state, perhaps smaller, and it was good to handle those horrible injuries, however, due to the lack of equipment, many of those patients died, which certainly would not have died in a better equipped hospital,” he said.

On Saturday, the UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher described the current situation in Gaza as serious.

“All entrance points to Gaza are closed for load since the beginning of March. On the border, the food is rotting, the medicine expires and the vital medical team is stuck,” he said.

“If the basic principles of humanitarian law still have, the international community must act to maintain them.”

On March 2, the Israeli government closed border crossings with Gaza and the humanitarian aid. He said this was in response to what he called Hamas’ refusal of a new proposal from the United States to extend the first stage of the high fire and the hostage release agreement, instead of negotiating a second phase.

“When Israel resumed his attacks, it was almost identical to when they bombed incessantly when I was here a year ago,” says Dr. Perlmutter. “The only difference is now instead of bombing people in buildings, they bombarded people in stores.”

The Israeli army has regularly affirmed that Hamas operates from areas where civilians take refuge. He says he does not address civilians and takes measures to avoid civilian casualties.

He International Criminal Court last year issued arrest orders For Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes, saying that he found reasonable reasons to believe that “each one has criminal responsibility … for the war crime to intentionally direct an attack against the civilian population.” Negan this.

Israeli attacks have killed more than 15,000 Palestinian children in Gaza, the Ministry of Health led by Hamas reported.

And since the FDI broke the fire and resumed its attacks on March 18, 921 Palestinians have been killed, the ministry said.

Dr. Perlmutter warns that if there are more events of massive victims in Gaza of Israeli attacks, the lack of supplies in the two hospitals he has been working means that more Palestinians will die of wounds that could have been treated.