Nizam Mamode breaks down while recalling conditions at Gaza hospital;
tells British MPs he had ‘never seen anything on this scale ever.’
UK Surgeon Tells MPs Israeli Drones Shooting
Children in Gaza Deliberately ‘Day After Day’
Dania Akkad / Middle East Eye
(November 13, 2024) — A retired NHS surgeon who recently returned from working at a hospital in Gaza said he treated children “day after day after day” who had been deliberately targeted by Israeli drones following bomb attacks.
In harrowing testimony to British MPs on Tuesday, Nizam Mamode said of all the conflicts he had worked in, including the genocide in Rwanda, he and other experienced colleagues in Gaza had “never seen anything on this scale ever”.
He said at least once or twice daily, there were “mass casualty incidents,” meaning that 10 to 20 people were killed and up to 40 seriously injured. He estimated that at least 60 percent of the people treated at these times were women and children.
“Drones would come down and pick off civilians, children,” Mamode told members of the International Development Committee in a hearing focused on the humanitarian situation in Gaza.
“This is not an occasional thing. This was day after day after day operating on children who would say, ‘I was lying on the ground after a bomb dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me’.”
Mamode worked at Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza for a month between August and September for the British charity Medical Aid for Palestine (MAP).
He said he spent the entire month in the hospital partly because it was not safe to travel around, but also because Israel bombed MAP’s guest house in southern Gaza in January, an act that Mamode believes was deliberate.
“All of those guest houses are in the Israeli army’s computers and are designated safe houses, so my assumption is that it was a deliberate attack and the aim behind it is to discourage aid workers from coming,” Mamode said.
He ascribed the same aim to five Israeli attacks on UN convoys, including one while he was in Gaza.
Labour MP and committee chair Sarah Champion asked Mamode to clarify if he meant that rogue snipers were shooting at the armoured vehicles.
“No, no,” he said. “This is the Israeli army coming up as a unit and deliberately shooting.”
Mamode said he had been given “very clear instructions” about what to do when travelling in a UN convoy while in Gaza.
“The doors are going to be locked when you set off. Do not unlock the doors, if the army shoots at you and order you out. Do not get out of the vehicle,” he said he had been told.
“This is a UN convoy. It’s got UN in big letters on the side and twice a week, it carries about 30 to 40 aid workers from different organisations in and out.”
Mamode said he had to choose whether to sleep in a hot room inside the hospital or outside on stairs where it was cooler, but where drones “had the ability to pick me off”.
Mamode later added: “My biggest fear while I was there was being killed by the Israelis.”
Maggots in Wounds
The 62-year-old surgeon broke down three times during his testimony as he provided detailed accounts of his patients, including an 8-year-old girl who he said was bleeding to death during surgery one Saturday evening.
“I asked for a swab and they said, ‘No more swabs’,” he said, momentarily unable to speak.
Mamode said lack of medical supplies as a result of Israel not allowing aid into Gaza included sterile gloves, drapes and pain killers, but also basic items like soap and shampoo, leading to unhygienic conditions.
“I saw I don’t know how many wounds with maggots in [them]. One of my colleagues took maggots out of a child’s throat in intensive care,” he said. “There were flies in operating theatre landing in wounds.”
He and his colleagues were particularly disturbed by a pattern of wounds — three to four shots on the left and right side of the chest and also in the groin area — caused by drones.
“That we thought was prima facie evidence of an autonomous drone or semi-autonomous drone because a human operator would not be able to fire with the degree of accuracy that quickly,” Mamode said.
But he also said the pellets fired by most drones were also more destructive than bullets which would pierce a body straight through. Instead, the pellets were bouncing around inside bodies.
A seven-year-old boy — one of the children who had told Mamode that he had been in a bombing and then deliberately hit by a drone — came into the hospital with his stomach hanging out of his chest, and further injuries to his liver, spleen, bowel and arteries.
“He survived that and went out a week later,” he said. “Whether he is still alive, I don’t know.”
When an MP asked Mamode if he had seen Hamas while he was working, the doctor laughed.
“I am laughing because this was a question I asked when I got there. ‘So is Hamas in the hospital?’ And they just laughed at me,” he said.
“They said: ‘There is no Hamas. There are a few fighters hiding in tunnels. There is no Hamas. There never was any Hamas in the hospital. Everybody hates Hamas’.”
Mamode said in other conflict zones, fighters usually come in with guns in an obvious way.
“We never saw any of that. We were allowed to go wherever we wanted in the hospital,” he said.
“There might have been a tunnel underneath. Who knows? But if Hamas was coming and going in the hospital, it would have been fairly evident.”
They Took Him Away and Killed Him’
His Palestinian colleagues told Mamode that when Israeli forces attacked the hospital in February, killing members of staff and putting them in a mass grave with patients, many other colleagues had been taken away and detained.
One of them included an atheist. “He hated Hamas and, before the war, he was very vociferous about those things. He just thought Islam was stupid and he thought [of] Hamas was stupid,” Mamode said he had been told.
“They just took him away and killed him. That’s what’s going on. As far as I can see, it doesn’t matter who you are in Gaza. If you are a Palestinian in Gaza, you are a target,” he said.
Champion said Mamode’s testimony was “profound and deeply chilling”.
She said: “On this evidence, the UK needs to take seriously the prospect of international humanitarian law having been egregiously broken in Gaza.”
The committee hearing came as a 30-day deadline that the US government set for the Israel last month to ensure that more aid entered Gaza passed with NGOs warning that the situation in northern Gaza is in an “even more dire state today than a month ago”.
Hours after Mamode’s provided evidence, the Biden administration said it would not limit arms transfers to Israel as it had threatened, saying that Israel had taken “a number of steps” to address the demands it had made.
“We have not at this time made an assessment that the Israelis are in violation of US law,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said. “We’re going to continue to assess their compliance with US law. We’ve seen some progress be made. We’d like to see more changes happen.”
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. More about MEE can be found here.
Locals report Israeli quadcopters drawing people out of their houses
by playing sounds of women and children in distress.
War on Gaza: Israeli Drones Lure Palestinians With
Recordings of Crying Infants — and Shoot Them
Maha Hassaini / Middle East Eye
GAZA STRIP, Occupied Palestine (April 17, 2024) — Israeli quadcopters are employing a “bizarre” new tactic of playing audio recordings of crying infants and women in order to lure Palestinians to locations where they can be targeted.
On Sunday and Monday night, residents of the northern parts of Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp woke up to the sounds of babies crying and women calling out for help.
When they went outside to locate the source of the cries and provide aid, Israeli quadcopters reportedly opened fire directly at them.
Samira Abu al-Leil, a resident of the refugee camp, told Middle East Eye that she heard Israeli quadcopters opening fire during and shortly after playing the recorded sounds, which lasted for several minutes and recurred multiple times on Monday night.
“I heard a woman crying and screaming for help, saying, ‘Help me, my son was martyred’. The sounds were coming from the street and they were bizarre,” the 49-year-old said.
“Some men rushed out to the rescue, only to be shot by the quadcopters that kept roaming all night long.” According to eyewitnesses, at least seven to 10 people were injured by the quadcopter fire overnight.
‘The injuries were serious:
some were shot directly in the head’
– Resident of Nuseirat refugee camp
Residents were unable to help the victims, as the “quadcopters were firing at anything that moved”. However, an ambulance managed to reach the area and transport them to hospital.
“At night, the streets are usually empty and men are inside their homes,” Leil added. “When the quadcopters open fire, they only hit the roofs and streets, they don’t find any people to shoot. So they played these sounds because they know the nature of our society; they know that men were going to try to provide help. They wanted them to go out so that they could shoot them,” she said.
“Yesterday and the night before, quadcopter bullets hit our roof, door and the street in front of our home. But yesterday morning, they fired some kind of explosive bombs with shrapnel that spreads everywhere on our neighbourhood, leaving many residents injured.”
Quadcopter Attacks Increasing
Quadcopters are remote-controlled drones that have been used extensively against Palestinian fighters and civilians in the Gaza Strip since 7 October.
This technology is gradually replacing ground troops, aiding in target identification, individual targeting, and securing areas where Israeli soldiers are stationed.
Additionally, quadcopters can scout forward positions, target individuals within residences, and disperse crowds in public spaces.
A significant event involving the use of quadcopters occurred on 11 January when a large crowd waiting for food on al-Rasheed Street, near the Gaza City coastline, came under fire from the Israeli military. Numerous witnesses recounted quadcopters firing upon hundreds of individuals awaiting the arrival of aid trucks.
Muhammed Abu Youssef, 19, told MEE that at around 2am on Monday he heard the cries of babies. However, since people were posting on social media to raise awareness of the source of these sounds, he chose not to venture outside.
‘We did not go out, because we learned that
these were only recordings played by the
quadcopters to lure us to go out’
— Muhammed Abu Youssef, camp resident
“There were different sounds coming from the quadcopters. They were making noises; some recordings were comprehensible and some were not. They lasted for around 30 to 60 minutes, then the quadcopters started opening fire and firing bombs in the neighbourhood,” he said.
“We did not go out, because we learned that these were only recordings played by the quadcopters to lure us to go out.”
A video recorded by a resident of Nuseirat refugee camp, and circulating on social media, showcased sounds of crying infants, while the resident explained that these were pre-recorded sounds played by Israeli quadcopters.
“Over the past three days, there have been at least 12 injuries due to quadcopter fire. This morning alone, we rescued six people who were wounded in the neighbourhood. The injuries were serious: some were shot directly in the head.”
According to the residents, the audio recordings also included songs in both Hebrew and Arabic, including children’s songs, sounds of clashes and moving tanks, voices of Palestinian armed men, and voices of local roaming vendors of cleaning products familiar to residents of Gaza.
For over a week, the Israeli army has been carrying out an intense military attack on the northwestern part of Nuseirat, targeting individuals, homes and neighbourhoods with artillery, aerial and naval shelling, as well as quadcopter gunfire.
Middle East Eye delivers independent and unrivalled coverage and analysis of the Middle East, North Africa and beyond. More about MEE can be found here
