A British doctor who has just returned from Gaza has described how one of her patients, a 21-year-old woman who was six months pregnant, lost her baby after she was “blown up in her tent”.
“Her husband was killed, she lost her eye, she had an open fracture, and both her legs were completely destroyed from the bomb blast,” Nada Al Hadithy told Sky News presenter Matt Barbet.
“This woman is completely emaciated, with no vitamins, no food. And one day her baby stopped moving.”
It comes after Donald Trump‘s Middle East envoy visited a food distribution site in Gaza.
Steve Witkoff and the US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, toured a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) distribution site in the southern city of Rafah on Friday.
The Israeli-backed American contractor’s efforts to deliver food to the region have been mired in violence and controversy, with hundreds killed by Israeli fire while walking to such aid sites since May, according to eyewitnesses, health officials and the UN human rights office.
Israel‘s military says it has only fired warning shots at people who approached its forces, while GHF said its armed contractors have only fired warning shots to prevent deadly crowding.
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Ms Hadithy said the situation in Gaza is “absolutely desperate” and a school classroom’s worth of children “are dying every single day”.
She said there was “a tangible difference in the amount of starvation and the emaciation of our patients” during the three weeks she was in Gaza, adding: “Even the severity of and relentlessness of the bombings was worse.
“It was mass casualty after mass casualty, with people being blown up in their tents, which were meant to be in green zones. The situation was catastrophic.”
She said one colleague – who she described as “patient, joyful and hardworking” – was followed home one day by a quadcopter drone, according to eyewitness testimony from fellow medical workers.
The drone “didn’t kill him on the route where he was on his own, it waited until he was in his tent and greeted his three children and killed all of them”, she added.
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During her time in Gaza, Ms Hadithy said she saw “emaciated children”, adding: “So now you’ve got two million starving people in [an area] the same size as Exeter, which in our country and in our census in 2021 had 130,000 people in it.
“That’s two million people with no water, no sanitation, no food, no medical supplies.”
Ms Hadithy also said Gazan health workers themselves are starving. “Never before have I seen such dignified, committed people,” she added.
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In a post on X, Mr Witkoff said he had spent more than five hours inside Gaza to gain “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza”.
He did not request any meetings with UN officials in Gaza during the visit, UN deputy spokesperson Farhan Haq said.
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The war began when Hamas-led militants killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, in an attack on Israel on 7 October 2023 and abducted 251 others. Of those, they still hold around 50, with 20 believed to be alive, after most of the others were released in ceasefires or other deals.
Israel’s retaliatory offensive has killed more than 60,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry, which does not differentiate between militants and civilians in its count.
The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) has been approached for a comment.
