'Huge amount' of Gaza surgery on children, says UK doctor

A British surgeon who recently returned from Gaza has told the BBC how she was struck by the high number of wounded children she operated on.

Dr Victoria Rose said a "huge amount" of her work was on children under 16, including many under six.

She said she had treated people with bullet wounds, burns and other injuries.

She added the lack of food available in Gaza meant patients were not strong enough to heal properly.

Over 76,000 Gazans - mainly civilians - have been injured by Israel over the course of the war, the Hamas-run health ministry says, while 33,000 people have been killed.

The war was sparked by Hamas attacking Israeli communities near Gaza last October, killing about 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and taking about 250 hostages to Gaza.

Dr Rose, a consultant plastic surgeon, spent two weeks from late March at the European Gaza Hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The "most shocking bit" was that during the trip she only operated on one person who at 53 was older than her, she told the BBC's Today programme.

"Everybody else was younger than me. A huge amount of my work was under-16s. Quite a worrying proportion of my work was six and under."

Dr Rose was carrying out reconstructive surgery on people who had been wounded.

"It was burns, shrapnel injuries, removing foreign bodies from tissue, reconstructing defects in faces, removing bullets from jaws, that kind of thing," she said.

The lack of food in Gaza - where the UN has warned of imminent famine - also meant many sick and injured people were not strong enough to fight off infection or heal properly from their wounds, she added.

"The people on my operating table were undernourished. A lot of them were cachectic," she said, referring to people experiencing extreme weight loss and muscle wasting.

"When we were looking at some of our patients who were not doing so well, there was a lot more infection than I've ever seen anywhere else.

"A lot of people's protein levels were in their boots, their haemoglobin levels were down. They are just not getting any nutrients, any vitamins or minerals."

Many of those brought to the hospital after Israeli bombardments are already dead

Dr Graeme Groom, another doctor who was in Khan Younis, said the sound of bombing, tank fire and small arms fire was louder than during a previous wartime visit.

At the time he and Dr Rose were working there, the Israeli military was still in Khan Younis. It pulled out most of its forces earlier this week.

"As [the bombing] became closer it was a very short time before we saw the effects of the bombing," he said.

"Just walking past the emergency department, for example, a pick up truck filled with distraught people backed up to the door with a pile of entwined corpses, followed by a line of cars with more bodies in the boots."

The European hospital - one of very few still operating in the territory - is also home to large numbers of displaced people, some of whom are camping out in hospital corridors.

Conditions in the hospital grounds are unsanitary, with sewage collecting near tents

But those who have set up makeshift tents on nearby open ground were being forced to move by the need for space for fresh graves, Dr Groom said.

"Now there is a huge and spreading cemetery so that the graves of the newly dead are now displacing the shelters of the barely-living," he said.

On Friday Rik Peeperkorn from the World Health Organization (WHO) said three other hospitals in Khan Younis - Nasser, al-Aqsa and al-Khair were completely non-functional after being the focus of fighting, while some basic services were being offered at al-Amal hospital despite "immense structural destruction".

Nasser, the main hospital in southern Gaza, has been out of use since Israeli forces raided it in February. Gaza's biggest hospital, al-Shifa in Gaza City, was largely destroyed during a two-week Israeli military raid last month.

Speaking after a visit to Khan Younis following the Israeli withdrawal, Mr Peeperkorn said the destruction in the city was "disproportionate to anything one can imagine. No building or road is intact, there is only rubble and dirt".

Israel imposed a siege on Gaza after the Hamas attack, with severe limitations on the amounts of food, water and other necessities allowed to enter the strip. It has since allowed some aid to enter Gaza, but the UN says a number of children have died from malnutrition in northern Gaza, which has been cut off from most aid, and famine is imminent there.

Israel has denied impeding the flow of aid into Gaza or within the territory.

After the Israeli military killed seven aid workers earlier this month, it agreed to open up new routes and allow more aid in, including to northern Gaza.

On Friday the Israeli military said the first food trucks had entered northern Gaza through a new crossing point.

White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Israel was meeting its commitment to open up additional vehicle crossings to Gaza for aid, but it was not enough and the US was continuing to press Israeli officials to do more.

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