Inside the Gaza's Nasser Hospital, surrounded by Israeli troops
Israel has surrounded Nasser Hospital, in the Gaza city of Khan Younis, where Dr. Muhammad Harara is one of five doctors left working. Here he tells his story.
Dr. Muhammad Harara is one of just five physicians left in Nasser Hospital, the last major medical facility still functioning in the Gaza Strip. The rest of his colleagues have fled or been killed.
Since the early days of the war, an NBC News crew has followed Harara and his fellow health workers on their hospital rounds, recording how they cope with the gravely injured, the bloodied and the terrified — all while surrounded by Israeli soldiers and tanks.
Harara, 27, whose sharp beard and lean features sit atop rumpled blue scrubs, checks on patients lying on filthy, blood-stained floors who are increasingly being operated on with little or no anesthetic. Food and painkillers have run out. With the roads around Nasser Hospital a battlefield, thousands of people are trapped inside, including 850 patients, according to the international charity Doctors Without Borders.
Harara is a general practitioner who dreams of one day becoming a plastic surgeon. While invariably impassive to the point of laconic on camera, he occasionally admits that the death and devastation affect him.
“We lost a lot of people today,” Harara said in the 16th week of the war, his deadpan words wrung of all emotion by weeks of violence. “I feel very, very sad for what happened today.”
Rating: 5