The chief surgeon at al-Ahli Arab Hospital – bombed on Tuesday night (17) –, Fadl Naeem, reported to CNN the moment and horrors of the explosion in the unit.
Naeem says he was resting after surgery, before starting another procedure, when he heard the sound of the explosion.
“We thought it was one of the explosions we hear all the time, other than in the hospital. Until people started running towards us, asking us to save them”, said the surgeon.
“We tried to give first aid, but there were more injuries than we could handle with the hospital’s limited resources,” added Naeem. “There were people alive, but we couldn’t save them.”
Version war
The explosion at the hospital left hundreds dead, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health. Responsibility for what happened divides Israel, Palestine and other nations amid the conflict between the Israelis and the radical Islamic group Hamas.
A CNN was unable to independently verify the authorship of the attack.
Palestinian authorities blamed Israel. Islamic Jihad, a Palestinian extremist group allied with Hamas, denied that any of its rockets were involved in the explosion and claimed to have no activity in or around Gaza at the time.
Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said the United States was responsible and that Washington gave Israel “the cover for its aggression.”
The health minister of the West Bank-based Palestinian Authority blamed Israel for what he called a “massacre.”
The country denied blame and claimed the explosion was caused by a failed rocket launch by Islamic Jihad.
An Israeli army spokesman said an analysis of the Israel Defense Forces’ operational systems indicated that rockets were fired by extremists in Gaza and passed near the hospital at the time it was hit.
“The multi-source intelligence we have in our hands indicates that Islamic Jihad is responsible for the failed rocket launch that hit the hospital in Gaza.”
A military spokesman said there was no structural damage to buildings around the hospital and no craters consistent with an airstrike. The spokesman said Hamas inflated the number of victims and said the group could not know as quickly as it claimed what caused the explosion.
The military said around 450 rockets fired from Gaza have failed and landed in the Gaza Strip over the past 11 days.
See the moment a hospital in Gaza is hit by an attack
*Published by Fernanda Pinotti
Source: CNN Brasil
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