An American doctor visited Gaza and saw the horror up close. Five cases haunt her
Dr Mimi Syed takes care of an 11-year-old boy who was shot and later died of his wounds in August 2024
Nir Hasson writes in Haaretz on 29 May 2025:
We have entered the stage of the monstrous. According to humanitarian organizations, the hunger in the Gaza Strip is now acute. Once Israel began blocking the entry of food, no fewer than 10,000 children have deteriorated into malnutrition that requires treatment.
The prime minister declared a resumption of aid, but what is entering is “the least of the least,” as the security cabinet has put it. Indeed, the UN humanitarian chief has called the aid “a drop in the ocean of what is urgently needed.”
On top of the hunger, the UN Human Rights Office discerns a “pattern of strikes on Internally Displaced People’s tents” and “the methodical destruction of entire neighborhoods.”
The destruction is taking place in tandem with mass expulsions within the Strip. In recent weeks, almost a third of Gazans have had to leave where they were living. Now the entire population is huddling in just a fifth of the enclave.
The obliteration of the health system has also been ramped up. The Israeli military is more intensely targeting hospitals and clinics (28 attacks within a week), where it says Hamas has positions. It isn’t allowing in much medication and basic equipment, and it’s hindering the evacuation of masses of wounded and sick people for medical care abroad. In this way, the army is causing deaths beyond the killing. With no treatment, even infections and easily removable tumors are ending in death.
And the attacks are continuing daily. Thirty-one people were killed this week in an attack on a school, among them 18 children and six women.
“I was so afraid,” said Hanin al-Wadiya, a little girl who fled the flames with burns on her face. “I was under the blanket and suddenly the fire was on me. I got up to look for Mommy and Daddy, but I didn’t find them.” Her whole family perished.
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“I think that what’s allowing all this is fear, racism and dehumanization,” says Dr. Mimi Syed, an American emergency medicine physician who did two tours of volunteer work in Gaza last year. “If you don’t see them as human beings, you can do anything to them.”
This week it looked like the bar of “doing anything to them” had been raised a notch. More and more civilians are being killed, including children in large numbers, amid the starvation and forced dislocations.
On Monday, the Israel Defense Forces and the Shin Bet security service issued a statement about the attack on the Fahmi Al-Jarjawi School in Gaza City. The terminology was familiar: The targets were “key terrorists” in a “command and control center.” This time, too, “numerous steps were taken to reduce the risk of harming civilians.”
The attack began at about 1 A.M. Hanin al-Wadiya, a 4-year-old girl who lived in the school with her displaced family, woke up as flames surrounded her, and as her sister screamed “Mommy, Mommy!” – as seen in footage of the disaster. “I heard Mimi [Hanin’s sister] calling for Mommy, but I couldn’t find her. I also called out ‘Mommy, Mommy.’ I went outside and started to cry,” Hanin said in the hospital, her eyes swollen shut, half her face and both hands covered with burns. Her mother, father and sister died in the fire, along with more than 30 others.
Hospitalized elsewhere in southern Gaza is Adam al-Najjar, the sole survivor of 10 siblings whose home was attacked two days before the strike on the school. His father was seriously wounded, and later died of his wounds. In this instance, too, the IDF said it had done all it could; in fact, it reprimanded the family for not leaving despite the evacuation order issued by the Arabic division of the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
But the latest evacuation order didn’t include the area where the family’s house was. Only in the previous order, a month and a half earlier, was that area designated for evacuation.
The orders have no expiry date and there is no all-clear siren, so Gazans must guess whether the danger has passed, and many take the risk. They have no choice: Gazans have less and less space to move around in; more than 80 percent of the enclave is under direct Israeli control or an evacuation order.
These orders – maps with areas marked in red and posted on X and Telegram – are the geographic manifestation of Israeli policy in Gaza. On Monday, the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit issued another evacuation order, one of the most important of the war: 43 percent of Gaza was marked in red, accompanied by the caption “Dangerous combat zone.”
In the two and a half months since Israel violated the two-month cease-fire, more than 630,000 people have been uprooted. The repeated dislocations are pushing Gazans to the very brink of survival. It’s very difficult to find food and basic necessities such as clean water, a functioning sewage system, shelter and medical care. Two million people are being pushed into a constantly shrinking area, where they live amid rubble or in tents that quickly tatter.
The children haven’t been in school for nearly two years. The crowding, heat, lack of running water or a functioning sewage system, amid the systematic eradication of the health system, are greatly increasing the danger of diseases and epidemics.
The brutal logic of this policy is concealed in one of the war’s official aims: “concentrating and moving the population.”
Above all, hunger dominates in Gaza. Last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared the resumption of aid to the Strip, but it was resumed sparingly. A paltry few dozen trucks entered through the Kerem Shalom crossing each day. Masses of children continue to stand for hours with an empty pot in the hope of receiving food.
On Tuesday, a large crowd stormed the food distribution facility that Israel established. Thousands ran across the dunes, pushed up against the fences and begged the armed American security men for food. (For the Americans it’s $1,100 for a day’s work.)
“I don’t believe that the Israelis want that. They don’t want all that to happen in their name,” Syed says. “I think the greatest thing I learned in Gaza is that it’s impossible to ignore the truth. After you see what’s happening there, it becomes very simple to distinguish between good and bad.” As she puts it: “Over 50 percent of Gaza’s population are children. The U.S. government is funding an illegal war on children. Nearly every global humanitarian agency has called what is happening in Gaza a war crime, yet the U.S. continues to supply weapons to commit these crimes.
“As I sit in my home comfortably writing the story of Sami [a child in Gaza], I am reminded that these deliberate and heinous crimes are still being committed against children like Sami. When will it end? When will the U.S. government represent what I once understood it to be? Weren’t we the ones who stopped Germany from exterminating so many innocent lives? Weren’t we supposed to be the ‘good guys’?”
Syed did her two stints of volunteer work in Gaza last August and December. In both of those tours she pronounced dozens of children dead. She saw eight children who died from hypothermia in the winter, a 9-year-old girl who died because it was impossible to obtain standard epilepsy medication, and a 9-month-old girl who died from drinking contaminated water.
Now back in the United States, Syed says she’s still speaking with doctors from Gaza. “They’re telling me that there’s no food. For the first time I’m hearing them say, ‘We’re all going to die, and the world isn’t doing a thing to save us,'” she says.
Since returning to the United States, Syed has been telling everyone who will listen about what’s going on in Gaza. She doesn’t spare her listeners graphic descriptions accompanied by photos. The following are some of the grim stories she has witnessed; Dr. Syed has previously recounted part of her testimony from Gaza in other English-language outlets.
Dr Mimi Syed
‘His mother and uncle arrived screaming in horror’
• Sami, Al-Aqsa Hospital, December 14, 2024
Sami, 8, was carried in by his older brother. The two had arrived at central Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Hospital in a donkey cart minutes after missile fragments tore Sami’s face apart.
Journalists and the curious stood around and took Sami’s picture; he was wearing a red and white striped jersey. The wounded part of his face was hidden from the cameras, resting on his brother’s shoulder.
“Sami had a blast injury to his face ripping apart most of the vital structures,” Syed says. “His mouth, nose and eyelids were all injured. The rest of his body was fine except for a couple of minor wounds. When he got to the resuscitation bay, he was laid on the gurney with no other adult in sight yet. He was covered in a bloody jacket.
“While he lay gurgling and choking on his own blood in front of me, I suctioned his mouth and nose to remove any obstruction in his airway. Just a slight movement in his face and I realized his entire jaw was dislocated and ripped off, hanging on by a small piece of skin. There were burn wounds and shrapnel on his entire face and neck.
“While I was working on him, another mass casualty incident came in with even more critically injured patients. I was forced to move little Sami onto the ground to make space for the other wounded patients to lie.
‘[Sami’s] mouth, nose and eyelids were all injured. The rest of his body was fine except for a couple of minor wounds. When he got to the resuscitation bay, he was laid on the gurney with no other adult in sight yet. He was covered in a bloody jacket.’
“While I laid him on the ground, his mother and uncle arrived screaming in horror. His mother immediately threw herself to the ground and started praying to God that her son be spared. She looked me straight in the eyes and grabbed my hand firmly, begging me to do everything to save him.
“I nodded … but deep down I knew I couldn’t make a promise like that. Given his condition, I knew it would be a miracle if he was saved. I was able to stabilize him for the time being so that I could transport him to the nearest functioning CT scanner.”
But the scanner wasn’t at Al-Aqsa Hospital, it was at Yaffa Hospital a few minutes away by car. Under the safety rules of the Palestinian Health Ministry, foreign volunteers were barred from Yaffa Hospital, which was near Israeli military positions at the time.
“I chose to get in the ambulance anyway to protect his airway and make sure he got to the CT safely,” Syed says. “While we were in the ambulance with Sami, another woman who was barely alive was also being transported for imaging.
“She was breathing through a tube and was accompanied by her adolescent son holding her hand. The ambulance drove through rubble and crowds of people on the road.”
Sami underwent a CT scan and was brought back to Al-Aqsa for facial reconstruction surgery. “The next day, I was walking through the hospital when someone grabbed my arm. It was Sami’s mother,” Syed says.
“She was sitting on a hospital bed in the corner of a hallway that was also flooded with patients on the ground or on cots. I looked on the bed and there was little Sami with sutures in place. He could barely open his mouth to drink from a straw and kept crying in pain every time he moved.”
‘One of the doctors said, “Don’t waste your time”‘
• Mira, Nasser Hospital, August 25, 2024
The photo of an X-ray was published in The New York Times last October: Mira, a 4-year-old girl, had a bullet lodged in her head. She became a symbol of the war, while the image became one of the most controversial of the nearly 20 months of fighting.
The New York Times published three such photos of X-rays in its opinion section; they were part of a piece signed by 65 doctors, nurses and paramedics who had volunteered in Gaza. These health workers argued that Israel was deliberately shooting at children, and the Times received a raft of letters claiming that the story was fake.
On October 15, Times opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury published a response: The newspaper had ensured that all the doctors and nurses had worked in Gaza. The CT images had been sent to independent experts in gunshot wounds, radiology and pediatric trauma, who corroborated the images’ authenticity. Also, the images’ digital metadata were compared with photos of the children.
According to Kingsbury, The Times possessed photos that corroborated the CT images but they were “too horrific for publication.” She concluded: “We stand behind this essay and the research underpinning it. Any implication that its images are fabricated is simply false.”
Mira’s parents told Al Jazeera that they had woken up early that August day in their tent in the Muwasi humanitarian zone, because their daughters were excited about the birthday of Mira’s older sister. Suddenly shooting broke out.
Mira came into the tent with her face covered in blood and a gaping wound above her forehead. Her father took her to Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in the south.
Mira underwent brain surgery, the bullet was removed and her life was saved. But like her other patients who survived, Mira is always in danger. She constantly needs treatment to reduce the pressure in her head, she suffers from weakness on her left side and must take medication.
According to the cruel triage that was necessary in Gaza, after mass-casualty events, people with brain wounds were not treated. The rule was that if a person’s head had been penetrated or brain matter was exposed, there was no point in fighting for the person’s life because of the shortage of brain surgeons, equipment and supplies.
Syed was supposed to let Mira die. “I started to examine her,” she says. “One of the doctors said, ‘Don’t waste your time.’ But I felt that she was still moving; she responded to pain – that made me think that I had to try.” Syed inserted tubes to help Mira breathe and was able to stabilize her. Mira underwent brain surgery, the bullet was removed and her life was saved. Syed stayed in touch with the girl’s parents, and she recently received a thrilling video: Mira was walking and talking. “The last time I saw her she barely opened her eyes,” Syed says.
But like her other patients who survived, Mira is always in danger. She constantly needs treatment to reduce the pressure in her head, she suffers from weakness on her left side and must take medication. In January, the family’s tent was hit in an attack and Mira’s mother lost an arm. “They’re hungry, they have no medication and they have no safe place,” says Syed, who is trying to help the family leave Gaza for medical care.
Syed took the photo of the X-ray to Washington and met with senators to try to persuade them to stop supporting Israel. “I encountered skepticism about the authenticity of the photo,” she says. “But I touched her, my hands treated her, I saved her. To question this truly broke my heart. I was asked why Israel would target children, but it makes sense to target children if you want to target the future.”
An injured child cries while receiving medical care at the Al-Awda Hospital in the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip, following an Israeli strike, on 29 May 2025
‘Suffering haunting me in ways words cannot express’
• Shaban, Al-Aqsa Hospital, December 24, 2024
Shaban died because of the war. He wasn’t struck by shrapnel or a bullet, he was brought down by the destruction of Gaza’s sewage and water systems. He was born in December 2022. When he was 2, in the middle of the war, he became ill and his skin turned sallow. “He was the same age as my youngest son yet he seemed so small for his age. The whites of his eyes glowed neon orange, his skin was a deep shade of Tang,” Syed says, referring to the powdered drink. “He lay motionless, breathing heavily, with a distended abdomen. Every movement caused him pain.”
Shaban was suffering from liver failure caused by hepatitis A. “In the United States and in every advanced country, it’s very difficult to contract hepatitis, and even if you do it’s quite simple to treat. In Gaza, we had no way to help him,” Syed says.
Shaban’s mother showed Syed photos of the boy taken a year earlier. “As the mother shared a picture of her son from just a year ago, beaming with health and happiness, I felt a wave of sorrow wash over me,” Syed says. The boy needed a liver transplant, but in this case too the family hadn’t received a permit from Israel to leave Gaza for the surgery.
Shaban died because of the war. He wasn’t struck by shrapnel or a bullet, he was brought down by the destruction of Gaza’s sewage and water systems. He was born in December 2022. When he was 2, in the middle of the war, he became ill and his skin turned sallow.
Syed photographed the mother carrying her son outside the hospital. “I can’t shake the image of the mother carrying her boy, his small frame clinging to her, both wrapped in despair,” Syed says.
“This child’s suffering haunts me in ways words cannot express. The physician in me knows that this child died shortly after leaving the hospital that day, but the mother in me doesn’t want to accept the reality.”
‘A sight I had never witnessed’
• Fatma, Al-Aqsa Hospital, December 23, 2024
Fatma, 29, arrived at the hospital with three small children, all under 7. She hadn’t been wounded from the bombs but was bleeding badly from one of her breasts.
“Her children sat quietly by her side, their faces etched with fear,” Syed says. “I reached into my bag, gloves bloody, and pulled out a few balloons to distract them. Their faces lit up as they forgot the horror around them for a moment.”
Their mother turned out to be suffering from very advanced breast cancer. “I was confronted with a sight that, despite my experience in underserved areas, I had never witnessed: a breast mass so large and disfiguring that it was clearly the source of her profuse bleeding,” Syed says.
The patient’s aunt, who accompanied her and her children, said doctors had discovered the lump, then the size of an olive, seven months earlier at the start of the war.
‘It was evident that her cancer was treatable. In any other country, or even in Gaza before October 7, she would have received care and been cured. But now there was nothing we could do.’
Fatma had been referred to surgery and chemotherapy, but because of the war and the destruction of the health system, she couldn’t get treatment. She had been approved for medical evacuation by the World Health Organization, but her request was refused by Israel, or the permits took too long to arrive.
“It was evident that her cancer was treatable,” Syed says. “In any other country, or even in Gaza before October 7, she would have received care and been cured. But now there was nothing we could do. We lacked the blood supply to stabilize her, and the surgical resources needed to debulk the tumor were better allocated to patients with more hope for recovery.
“She would die soon with her children next to her. This mother would never see her children grow up, never watch her daughter graduate from college, or her son become a man. The injustice of it all burned within me, a fire that would never be extinguished.”
Fatma was finally referred to a different hospital. When Syed called to find out what had become of her, she was told that Fatma had died that day.
Mourners react as they attend the funeral of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes, at Nasser hospital, in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, 23 May 2025
‘I saw the despair in her father’s eyes’
• Alaa, Al-Aqsa Hospital, December 4, 2024
In conversations with doctors who have treated civilians in Gaza, they always talk about the first minutes after a mass-casualty event. The descriptions are the same.
Minutes after the missile or bomb strikes, the emergency rooms and intensive care units become a scene out of a horror movie. The screams of pain merge with the cries of anguish of people who discover that a loved one has died.
The beds, gurneys and later the floor fill up with the wounded, as pools of blood ooze between them. And the doctors must repeatedly make cruel decisions: Who they will give up on because their prospect of survival is nil or entails resources needed to save others with a better chance.
Syed returned to Gaza on December 4 after her stint the previous August. “The journey was harrowing, with broken roads and children walking alone, stirring a familiar pit of dread in my stomach,” she says. “After an hour’s drive, we arrived at Nasser Hospital. The layout of the living quarters was unchanged – cramped bunk beds and the ever-present smell of sewage from the bathroom.
“As I began to unpack, a loud explosion shook the building. I knew immediately that this airstrike was closer than the others. Screams echoed as people rushed towards the hospital. I hurried to the trauma bay, knowing the drill all too well.
‘Alaa could die tomorrow. Her brain is exposed. If tomorrow she trips in the rubble, she’ll die, or if she gets sick from an infection. Everything is so uncertain. The feeling is that you’re not doing a lot, that you’re not bringing about change.’
“Struggling to put on my already torn gloves, I saw two small children being rushed in. Their families laid them on the floor, as no beds were available. I knew before touching them that they were gone. The feeling of utter helplessness washed over me.
“Next came an 8-year-old girl named Alaa, the same age as my own daughter. Her father explained that she had been playing in front of their tent when an airstrike sent shrapnel slicing her skull. She was critically injured, her body barely moving, and brain matter exposed. According to protocol, she was deemed unsalvageable.
“But when I saw the despair in her father’s eyes, I couldn’t just stand by. I grabbed the laryngoscope that I had to smuggle past the Israeli military from my bag and secured her airway, and then we rushed her to surgery.
“A few days later, I was reassigned to another hospital and lost track of Alaa’s progress. Her father had promised updates, but I feared the worst. One evening towards the end of my monthlong stay, I received a message with two videos.
“The first video showed Alaa sitting up and reading from a book with a bandage on her head. The second showed her walking, slightly unsteady but independently. She stopped in the center of the frame and said, ‘Shokran doktora, anam khair'” – “Thank you, doctor, I am fine.”
But Alaa needs surgery to protect her brain, an operation that cannot be done in Gaza. As with other cases, she is awaiting evacuation from the Strip.
“In the United States we have the ability to bring about change, to save lives,” Syed says. “In Gaza, even if you save a life, it’s not clear that you’ve succeeded.
“Alaa could die tomorrow. Her brain is exposed. If tomorrow she trips in the rubble, she’ll die, or if she gets sick from an infection. Everything is so uncertain. The feeling is that you’re not doing a lot, that you’re not bringing about change.”
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