On the frontlines of hell: Testimonies from Gaza’s doctors
People inspect the ruins of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, 1 April 2024
Sally Ibrahim reports in The New Arab on 10 March, 2025:
Darkness hung over the operating room at Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in central Gaza as surgeon Issam Abu Ajwa focused all his energy on saving a patient, the sounds of medical equipment mixing with the groans of the wounded man.
As the doctor fought desperately to save his life, the operating room doors were suddenly violently flung open. Dr Ajwa turned, still gripping a blood-soaked instrument, to find a group of armed Israeli soldiers standing in front of him.
“Are you Dr Issam Abu Ajwa?” one soldier, wearing a black helmet and protective shield, asked. “Yes, I am,” the doctor calmly replied. Then the blows began. The soldiers dragged him from the room still wearing his blood-stained medical scrubs and tied his hands and blindfolded him. For hours, he found himself handcuffed to an Israeli military truck, packed with fellow doctors and nurses.
“Our faces were pale, our eyes filled with fear, and the sound of shelling echoed in the distance,” he told The New Arab. “We were taken to a detention centre in Israel, where the nightmare that would last for months began.”
The doctor says that he was thrown on the floor and kicked in his head and body, with salt water poured into his ears. “The pain was unbearable; my head felt like it was going to explode,” he said. “They assaulted us deliberately, doctors and nurses, just because of our profession,” he added. “The most crushing part was when an investigator told me, ‘You are a great surgeon, right? We’ll make sure you never perform surgery again.'” After days of having his hands bound, Dr Ajwa’s fingers began to swell, and he experienced a loss of sensation. “They wanted to numb my hands so I couldn’t return to work if I were released. It wasn’t just physical torture; it was psychological torture as well,” he explained to TNA.
Dr Mohammed Abu Salmiya, director of Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza, was arrested in November 2023 and detained for seven months, during which time he was tortured.