Hospital nurse in ambulance recounts terror of Israeli airstrikes

Palestinian nurse Abdelsalam Barakat was inside an ambulance trying to transport patients with skull and chest fractures out of north Gaza when explosions struck at various times.

“The ambulance was shaking so much,” he said of the terrifying Israeli airstrikes on Friday that hit around him and his charges from Al-Shifa Hospital.

“It placed them between life and death, but we could not do anything about it.”

One of the attacks, among so many on the Gaza Strip for the last month, targeted an ambulance carrying fighters of Hamas, according to Israel, which accuses its foe of shielding itself at medical facilities.

However, the Gaza Health Ministry, a hospital director and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society all said the convoy of five ambulances was evacuating wounded to supposedly safer south Gaza before possibly crossing the border to Egypt.

The first strike, at a roundabout a few minutes away from the hospital, injured a paramedic and a passenger in one of the ambulances, Barakat said.

The second, near the hospital gate as the convoy was returning there having abandoned the attempt to drive south, hit an ambulance ahead of his, killing a paramedic and others nearby, he added.

With bodies lying in pools of blood, Barakat’s vehicle fled the chaos and headed for the central ambulance station, about 1.2 km away, other strikes shaking them en route.

Eventually, they took the patients back to Al-Shifa — no nearer evacuation and in a worse state than before.

Hospital director Mohammed Abu Selmeyah said 15 people had been killed and 60 injured in the strike at the hospital gate.

The UN secretary general and aid agencies working in Gaza condemned the attack

“This is a new low in an endless stream of unconscionable violence,” said Doctors Without Borders.

Hamas has invited international verification of Israeli accusations of using hospitals.

Barakat was back at work on Monday, treating seriously injured patients with no power and scarce resources.

“There is a huge lack of medical equipment and electricity and very high humidity in the building,” he said, shortly after disinfecting a man’s long, stitched-up abdominal wound with what looked like a small antiseptic wipe.

Ashraf, a resident of Gaza City sheltering in Al-Shifa for three weeks with his wife and four children, said he ran outside when the ambulance convoy was hit.