'Can't imagine how things can get any worse': Doctors back from Gaza share horrors inflicted on Palestinians
'When I was treating her, she asked me to come in closer to her. I came in closer to her, and she asked me, 'doctor, am I in heaven,' Doctor Mohamed Ashraf tells Anadolu

- 'I was devastated to see that my colleagues and my friends on the ground in Gaza had become completely emaciated,' says vascular surgeon Mahim Qureshi, telling her account on the ground
LONDON
Doctors, who volunteered in the Gaza Strip amid ongoing Israeli attacks, described their experience of treating Gaza’s sick and wounded people under dire and horrific conditions as the onslaught on the territory continued since Oct. 7, 2023.
The brutal Israeli war on the Gaza Strip has killed more than 45,000 people, mostly women and children. One of the children who succumbed to her injuries after getting injured in an Israeli attack was a nine-year-old girl whose last moments were witnessed by a Palestinian doctor, Mohamed Ashraf.
Among countless, Mohamed Ashraf recounted a heartbreaking story of treating a Palestinian girl whose family had been killed in an Israeli missile strike.
In an interview with Anadolu, Ashraf who has volunteered at Al-Shifa Hospital and Kuwaiti hospital, said that when the girl was brought to hospital with shrapnel all over her face and she could not open her eyes.
"When I was treating her, she asked me to come in closer to her. I came in closer to her, and she asked me, 'Doctor, am I in heaven," said Ashraf who is also a lecturer at the Islamic University of Gaza.
He said that her mother had promised her child that she would wake up in a "calm, peaceful place" and would go to "heaven directly," if they were attacked.
"Because my mom told me, if we have been attacked in our home, we will go directly to heaven. And she told me that heaven is a very nice, cozy, calm place, but in this place, there's a lot of people shouting around me and screaming, I'm not sure if my mom told me the truth or not," the doctor quoted the girl as saying.
Ashraf said he told the injured Palestinian girl that her mum indeed told her the truth.
"If we have been killed, we will go to Heaven, which is a very nice, cozy, calm place. But this is the hospital," the doctor said, adding: "Unfortunately, a few hours later, she went to the heaven that her mom told her about."
Ashraf gave his account during an interview following a recent event in Gaza organized by the British Palestinian Committee and the UK Gaza Community.
He also talked about the current situation of many of his colleagues in the Gaza Strip, where some of the health care professionals were still under the rubble, while the whereabouts of some of them are still unknown.
Along with the difficulties at the hospitals in treating patients due to the lack of materials and medicines, another problem they face is the wellbeing of their families, especially during communication blackouts.
"I wasn't able to contact my family to know what their condition is, I tried to call hospitals when the connections allowed me to ask these hospitals in the south, if these names came into the hospital even as injured, casualties, or even if they have been killed."
Ashraf said he was giving the names of his daughter and wife by asking them whether they have received people with these names.
"This is the only way that I make sure that my wife or daughter has been killed or injured by approaching these hospitals in the south," added the doctor.
Ashraf also mentioned that they still have no information about Mosab Sama's whereabouts, a doctor who was abducted by Israeli forces from Nasser Hospital.
'I cannot imagine what is going on in the north'
Mahim Qureshi, a London-based British-Pakistani vascular surgeon, recently returned to the UK after volunteering in Gaza between Oct. 21 and Nov. 21 this year.
In an interview with Anadolu, Qureshi said that she was in the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in April 2024 and returned in October for a month, and this time she was based at the Nasser Medical Complex.
"I was devastated to see that my colleagues and my friends on the ground in Gaza had become completely emaciated," she said, referring to the worsening situation on the ground.
She stressed that the situation is far worse than she remembered it even in April.
"When I left in April, I thought, I can't imagine how things can get any worse. Sadly, they have."
Qureshi touched on the lack of aid and medical equipment, pointing out that the amount of aid getting in seems to be even less than it was previously.
"Basic necessities are still not available. Within the hospital, equipment is so scanty and so hit and miss as to what might be available and for any given emergency."
She went on to say that there is still a severe shortage of gowns, of surgical gowns, or surgical drapes as she noted that sometimes they were cutting up gowns in order to create drapes and in order to keep a patient sterile.
"Sometimes there are such few gowns that we have to wait before we can do an operation in order to wait until the gowns we've last used have been resterilized before we can go again."
Qureshi, who volunteered in southern Gaza, voiced concern about the "apocalyptic" situation in the north of Gaza, saying: "I cannot imagine what is going on in the north."
The doctor said that in her most recent trip, she was based within the humanitarian zone and despite that in her last two weeks in there, they averaged more than one mass casualty a day.
"This is in the green zone, this is in the humanitarian zone. So, I cannot begin to imagine how bad things are in the north," she added.
Anadolu Agency website contains only a portion of the news stories offered to subscribers in the AA News Broadcasting System (HAS), and in summarized form. Please contact us for subscription options.