Gaza: ‘I lost the son we waited eight years for’ More than a week has passed since the explosion at Al Ahli Hospital in Old Gaza, but Arafat Abu Asi still remembers the moments when he lost his two sons, a brother and his sister, as a result of the attack. lost two sons.
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A large number of my family members went to take shelter inside the hospital that night, says Arafat while crying. We were told that the Gaza neighborhood we live in could be bombed by Israel at any time. We thought the hospital would be the safest place in such a situation.
It should be noted that Al-Ahli Hospital is funded by the Anglican Church, and the hospital management insists that the hospital is completely independent from the influence of any political faction in Gaza. For these reasons, Arafat’s family had no doubt that the hospital could be targeted.
Arafat’s sons, Ahmed and Mazen, who were killed in the blast, were 13 and 17 years old, respectively. About the bitterness of losing his sons, he says, ‘After eight years of my marriage, with the help of IVF treatment, our eldest son Mazen was born, who was 17 years old. And four years after the birth of Mazen, the birth of Ahmad became possible. After receiving news that five of his closest family members had been killed in the attack on the hospital, Arafat did not go to see their’mutilated bodies’ and requested his sister’s husband to take their two sons, younger Arrange, for the burial of his brother and two nephews.
Arafat says that ‘I did not see my two sons after they were killed, and neither did my wife. We don’t want their last image in our minds to be two mutilated corpses.
According to the Palestinian authorities, 500 people were killed in the explosion at the hospital. Arafat was with his wife and youngest son, nine-year-old Faraj, at a neighbor’s house at the time.
Richard Sewell from St. George’s College Jerusalem told the BBC that 600 patients and staff were inside the building while 1,000 people were sheltering in the hallways when the hospital exploded. He said that at one time, six thousand people were sheltered in the hospital.
Photos from the aftermath of the blast at Al-Ahli Hospital showed injured people being carried out on stretchers in the dark while wrecked vehicles and bodies lay outside.
Palestinian officials say that the explosion was caused by an Israeli airstrike, while Israel claims that the explosion was caused by a rocket fired by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization. Palestine Islamic Jihad denies this allegation. Al Ahli Hospital is surrounded on three sides by densely populated areas, including Zaytoun, Al Daraj, and Shujaiyah.
Arafat says that on October 17, the residents of these three areas were warned that the bombing was going to happen, so thousands of people rushed to the hospital to take shelter.
Dr. Ashraf, spokesman for the Gaza Ministry of Health, has told the BBC that more than one member of several families was killed in the blast. Eyewitnesses told the BBC that 31 members of a family were killed in the blast. Just a few minutes before the explosion, the hospital’s orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Fazal Naeem, was preparing to operate.
“Suddenly we heard an explosion, and pieces of the roof of the operation theater started falling on our heads,” he recounts.
Due to these falling pieces, Dr. Fazl also suffered a slight injury to his head.
When Dr. Fazal ran outside immediately after the explosion, he saw “bodies and body parts everywhere; injured people were screaming for help.”
“It was the first time in my life that I had to decide very quickly who could live and who was no longer worth helping,” he recalls.
A doctor who provided medical aid to the wounded in Gaza in the past said that people were seriously injured in the explosion.
He says that on October 15, two days before the explosion, the hospital received a call from the Israeli army asking why the hospital was not evacuated despite the warning.