LONDON: A British surgeon who volunteered in Gaza has said a “huge amount” of her operations were on children younger than 16, the BBC reported on Friday.
Dr. Victoria Rose added that common injuries included bullet wounds, shrapnel injuries and burns, and that she had performed surgery on many children younger than 6. Many patients are unable to heal from surgery due to malnutrition, she said.
The consultant plastic surgeon spent two weeks working in late March at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.
In that time, she only operated on one person older than her — a 53-year-old. That fact was the “most shocking bit” of her time in Gaza, she told the “Today” program.
Rose added: “Everybody else was younger than me. A huge amount of my work was under-16s. Quite a worrying proportion of my work was 6 and under.”
Injuries to Palestinians required “removing foreign bodies from tissue, reconstructing defects in faces, removing bullets from jaws, that kind of thing,” she said.
“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.”
At the time of Rose’s visit, she and a fellow doctor, Graeme Groom, regularly heard nearby fighting and operated on freshly wounded patients as the Israeli military assaulted Khan Younis.
Groom said: “As (the bombing) became closer it was a very short time before we saw the effects of the bombing.
“Just walking past the emergency department, for example, a pickup 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.”
Many Palestinians have taken refuge in the European Hospital, but those who have set up makeshift tents on nearby ground are being forced to move due to the need for new graves, Groom added.
“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.”
The World Health Organization’s representative for Palestine, Rik Peeperkorn, said on Friday after visiting Khan Younis that the city’s destruction is “disproportionate to anything one can imagine.”
He added: “No building or road is intact, there is only rubble and dirt.” Three other hospitals in the city have been rendered non-functional by fighting, he said.
‘Worrying proportion’ of patients in Gaza are children aged 6 and younger: British surgeon
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‘Worrying proportion’ of patients in Gaza are children aged 6 and younger: British surgeon
- ‘Huge amount’ of Dr. Victoria Rose’s operations were on children younger than 16
- Patients struggling to heal after ‘not getting any vitamins or minerals’ due to famine
UK will sanction Israel ministers Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, Times reports
- London will join Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other nations in freezing assets and imposing travel bans on Ben-Gvir — a West Bank settler — and Smotrich
LONDON: Britain and other international allies will formally sanction two far-right Israeli ministers, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, following their conduct over the war in Gaza, the Times reported on Tuesday.
London will join Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other nations in freezing the assets and imposing travel bans on Israel’s national security minister Ben-Gvir — a West Bank settler — and finance minister Smotrich.
Britain’s foreign office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Britain, like other European countries, has been ramping up the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government to end the blockade on aid into Gaza, where international experts have warned that famine is imminent.
London last month suspended free trade talks with Israel for pursuing “egregious policies” in the occupied West Bank and Gaza, summoned its ambassador, and announced further sanctions against West Bank settlers.
Foreign minister David Lammy, who called Israel’s recent offensive “a dark new phase in this conflict,” has previously condemned comments by Smotrich on the possible cleansing and destruction of Gaza and relocation of its residents to third countries.
Several areas south of Sudan capital at risk of famine, says World Food Programme
- Several areas south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, are at risk of famine, the World Food Programme
GENEVA, June 10 : Several areas south of the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, are at risk of famine, the World Food Programme said on Tuesday, with need on the ground outstripping resources amidst a funding shortfall.
“The level of hunger and destitution and desperation that was found (is) severe and confirmed the risk of famine in those areas,” Laurent Bukera, WFP Country Director in Sudan, told reporters in Geneva via video link from Port Sudan.
Abbas tells Macron he supports demilitarization of Hamas
PARIS: Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas has said that Hamas “must hand over its weapons” and called for the deployment of international forces to protect “the Palestinian people,” France announced on Tuesday.
In a letter addressed on Monday to French President Emmanuel Macron and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who this month will co-chair a conference on a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinians, Abbas outlined the main steps that he thinks must be taken to end the war in Gaza and achieve peace in the Middle East.
“Hamas will no longer rule Gaza and must hand over its weapons and military capabilities to the Palestinian Security Forces,” wrote Abbas.
He said he was “ready to invite Arab and international forces to be deployed as part of a stabilization/protection mission with a (UN) Security Council mandate.”
The conference at UN headquarters later this month will aim to resurrect the idea of a two-state solution — Israel currently controls large parts of the Palestinian territories.
“We are ready to conclude within a clear and binding timeline, and with international support, supervision and guarantees, a peace agreement that ends the Israeli occupation and resolves all outstanding and final status issues,” Abbas wrote.
“Hamas has to immediately release all hostages and captives,” Abbas added.
In a statement, the Elysee Palace welcomed “concrete and unprecedented commitments, demonstrating a real willingness to move toward the implementation of the two-state solution.”
Macron has said he is “determined” to recognize a Palestinian state, but also set out several conditions, including the “demilitarization” of Hamas.
In his letter, Abbas reaffirmed his commitment to reform the Palestinian Authority and confirmed his intention to hold presidential and general elections “within a year” under international auspices.
“The Palestinian State should be the sole provider of security on its territory, but has no intention to be a militarised State.”
France has long championed a two-state solution, including after the October 7, 2023 attack by Palestinian militants Hamas on Israel.
But formal recognition by Paris of a Palestinian state would mark a major policy shift and risk antagonizing Israel, which insists that such moves by foreign states are premature.
Lebanon says two dead in Israel strike
BEIRUT: An Israeli strike killed a Lebanese father and son Tuesday in a southern village, the Lebanese health ministry and state media said, the latest deaths despite a November ceasefire.
A second son was also wounded in the strike in Shebaa, the state-run National News Agency reported. There was no immediate comment from the Israeli military.
“An Israeli enemy drone carried out a strike in the village of Shebaa, killing two people and wounding one,” a health ministry statement said.
Israel had warned on Friday that it would keep up its strikes on Hezbollah targets across Lebanon despite the condemnation expressed by the Lebanese government after a massive strike on south Beirut the previous night on the eve of the Eid Al-Adha holiday.
Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah said the strikes levelled nine residential blocks. The Israeli military said they targeted underground drone factories.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun condemned the strikes as a “a flagrant violation” of the November 27 ceasefire agreement, which was supposed to end more than a year of hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah that culminated in two months of full-blown war.
Israel commits ‘extermination’ in Gaza by killing in schools, UN experts say
- In its latest report, the commission said Israel had destroyed more than 90 percent of the school and university buildings and more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza
VIENNA: UN experts said in a report on Tuesday that Israel committed the crime against humanity of “extermination” by killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites in Gaza, part of a “concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life.”
The United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel was due to present the report to Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council on June 17.
“We are seeing more and more indications that Israel is carrying out a concerted campaign to obliterate Palestinian life in Gaza,” former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, who chairs the commission, said in a statement.
“Israel’s targeting of the educational, cultural and religious life of the Palestinian people will harm the present generations and generations to come, hindering their right to self-determination,” she added.
The commission examined attacks on educational facilities and religious and cultural sites to assess if international law was breached.
Israel disengaged from the Human Rights Council in February, alleging it was biased.
When the commission’s last report in March found Israel carried out “genocidal acts” against Palestinians by systematically destroying women’s health care facilities during the conflict in Gaza, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the findings were biased and antisemitic.
In its latest report, the commission said Israel had destroyed more than 90 percent of the school and university buildings and more than half of all religious and cultural sites in Gaza.
“Israeli forces committed war crimes, including directing attacks against civilians and wilful killing, in their attacks on educational facilities ... In killing civilians sheltering in schools and religious sites, Israeli security forces committed the crime against humanity of extermination,” it said.
The war was triggered when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel in a surprise attack in October 2023, and took 251 hostages back to the enclave, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with a military campaign that has killed over 54,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities.
Harm done to the Palestinian education system was not confined to Gaza, the report found, citing increased Israeli military operations in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as well as harassment of students and settler attacks there.
“Israeli authorities have also targeted Israeli and Palestinian educational personnel and students inside Israel who expressed concern or solidarity with the civilian population in Gaza, resulting in their harassment, dismissal or suspension and in some cases humiliating arrests and detention,” it said.
“Israeli authorities have particularly targeted female educators and students, intending to deter women and girls from activism in public places,” the commission added.
