LONDON: In the initial weeks of the war in Gaza, Ghassan Abu-Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic and reconstructive surgeon, worked day and night at Al-Shifa Hospital as part of a team from the medical charity Medecins sans Frontieres.
During that time, Abu-Sitta regularly posted updates on X about the injuries he was treating. On returning to London, he held a press conference at which journalists were shown some of the footage he had deemed too distressing to post online.
He also shared photographs of some of the children he had treated who had been left with life-changing injuries. Underscoring the scale of suffering, Abu-Sitta said he had performed six amputations on child patients in one night alone.
Israel mounted its military campaign in Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which saw 1,200 killed — the majority of them civilians — and 250 taken hostage.
Twenty-two months later, Israeli operations have destroyed much of Gaza’s infrastructure, created famine conditions, and left about 60,000 Palestinians dead, according to Gazan health authorities.
