Inside a southern Gaza hospital: Screaming orphaned children, amputee toddlers and the stench of rotting flesh
Warning: this article contains distressing detail about people's injuries
A badly burned toddler screaming for the mother he doesn’t know is dead, because doctors do not have enough painkillers to relieve his suffering. An eight-year boy whose brain is exposed as bombing damaged parts of his skull. A teenage girl, her eye surgically removed, because every bone in her face is smashed. A three-year-old double amputee, whose severed limbs are laid out in a pink box beside him.
And in the background is the stench of rotting flesh as maggots “creep out of untreated wounds”.
This is the daily reality at the European Hospital inside the southern Gaza city of , as described by veteran British war surgeon Tom Potokar, who works for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).
