During a press conference on 14 May, Dr Mohammed Salha, Director of Al Awda’s hospital in North Gaza, explained the horror his team are experiencing.
Relief International has been partnering tirelessly with Al Awda Community Association, thanks to funding from European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations (ECHO), and we remain ready to scale up as soon as we are able. We must raise our voices and stand together to protect lives and restore dignity.
Dr Mohammed Salha, Director of Al Awda hospital in North Gaza, Al Awda Health and Community Association.
14 May 2025
It has been a long, deadly night for Gaza. A night that has lasted 585 days now. And we don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. Only more darkness. To say that Al-Awda Hospital in northern Gaza has been working in the most difficult and dangerous conditions, doesn’t really convey the horror of the situation on the ground.
Last night again, the area around our hospital received a forced displacement order – the second one in just one month – and airstrikes lasted all night. Our teams treated 52 injured people. One of them was a baby girl, just a few months old. Both her legs had been shredded by the bombings. We also received nine bodies without life. Seven of them were children… Children.
Even after 19 months of this hell, I can tell you, no one gets used to the sight of innocent babies killed or mutilated for life. Our hearts break into a thousand pieces every time.
In the past 19 months, Israeli forces have arrested several of our medical staff without explanation, including our director. Six staff members were killed while working to save lives inside the hospital because of shelling and sniper attacks. Many others have been killed in their homes with their children too. They have hit our hospital more than 18 times: right now, half of our bed capacity is now out of service as two patient floors were destroyed. Our ambulance, medicine and medical supplies stores and the desalination plant have also been targeted and destroyed. We have been besieged for several days and weeks, not once… not twice… but three times.
My teams and my patients, and myself are all exhausted. Every Palestinian in Gaza is exhausted.
The Israeli forces are targeting every aspect of the health system across Gaza and any survival capacity for our people’s bodies. Extreme starvation, dehydration, exposure to the cold and the sun and insects, are making it almost impossible for anyone’s body to cope even with the smallest disease, illness or infection. After 10 weeks of total siege, people are dying – not because we don’t know how to save them, but because we simply don’t have the basic minimum needed to save them.
The lack of fuel and oxygen supplies is forcing our medical teams to use a manual air tube. For one patient, we used manual oxygenation for 3 days straight – that’s 72 hours without stopping – to save the life of a patient. 72 hours, can you imagine? But even with those efforts, the patient died. We simply couldn’t save his life without proper medicine and oxygen cylinders.
Across our hospitals – one in northern Gaza and one in central Gaza Strip, we are seeing more and more births of babies with congenital deformities due to the military’s use of internationally banned weapons and the spread of famine and malnutrition. Two weeks ago, a baby girl was born in our hospital without a brain. We had never seen such cases before these cruel attacks.
Malnutrition is spreading rapidly, especially among children, pregnant women, and nursing mothers. If food and medicine don’t enter soon, I don’t know what will happen to all of our patients, to all of us.
What more can I say?
As a doctor, as a father, as a human being… I have seen things that will haunt me for the rest of my life.
When our ambulance was bombed recently, it was transporting a woman who had just given birth. Inside, there was the mother, her companion, and her newborn, who was just a day old. The mother and her companion were killed instantly. The baby miraculously survived for 20 hours inside the ambulance. We couldn’t reach him for all that time. After 20 hours, our team was finally able to rescue him and place him in an incubator. Although he survived, he now faces life without a mother or a father.
Who can live with this reality?
We are here. Holding strong. Serving our people. Day after day.
We will not give up on them. But how much longer will we have to keep going like this?
How much more does the world need to hear and see?
We are only doctors and nurses. We cannot stop what is happening.
We are calling on the world to raise their voices, and to stand with us in protecting lives and restoring dignity.