‘Childbirth after decapitation’: Australian doctors recount horrors of Israeli genocide in Gaza

Two Australian doctors have recounted the harrowing details of their work under constant Israeli bombardment and severe medical shortages amid the Israeli regime’s ongoing genocide in the Gaza Strip.

In a report published on Monday, news.com.au, an Australian news website, published a video of Dr. Nada Abu Alrub and Dr. Saya Aziz making the remarks concerning the situation governing al-Shifa Hospital, Gaza City’s largest medical facility.

The duo had moved to the facility from al-Aqsa Hospital in the central Gaza Strip, enduring an eight-hour-long journey that would normally take 20 minutes. They identified constant evacuations throughout the territory amid incessant Israeli bombing as the reason behind the delay.

“It’s a nightmare,” Abu Alrub said, citing back-to-back bombings of al-Shifa by Israeli Apache helicopter gunships, supersonic stealth strike F-35 warplanes, and F-16 aircraft.

The aggression, going on without a letup, she said, would take place as patients and dead bodies kept arriving in overwhelming numbers.

She reported over 1,500 people still trapped under rubble and attacks on the hospital entrance in consecutive days.

The hospital conditions are chaotic amid worrying unsanitary conditions, with medical staff lacking basic supplies such as soap, gloves, and anesthetics, she added.

The physician noted that patients were being treated on the floor, and doctors had only ketamine for comfort.

“One mass casualty today, at least 10 to 20 [were] dead on arrival or GCS3 that we can’t do anything about,” she said.

In a particularly heart-wrenching incident, Abu Alrub delivered a baby via emergency C-section from a nine-month-pregnant “beheaded lady,” with the baby girl surviving.

The doctors live under constant fear, receiving no evacuation orders, no internet, and no electricity, she added, stressing, “We are hardly surviving … and hardly able to help anyone.”

Aziz, meanwhile, described the conditions as “catastrophic,” with patients often arriving on their own mattresses rescued from rubble, sometimes carried by family members.

According to her, the hospital is filthy, flies infest rooms, and essential medical supplies are absent.

“Healthcare is not collapsing, it has collapsed,” she said.

Bombs drop constantly, inflicting psychological terror, Aziz said, and noted that the victims were predominantly children, women, and young families.

‘Ashamed to be an Australian’

Aziz said she was ashamed to be an Australian, apparently referring to Canberra’s unapologetic actual support for the genocide that flew in the face of its occasional expressions of disapproval of the regime perpetrating it.

Dr Mutaz Harara, head of al-Shifa’s emergency department, also stated that medical teams no longer feel safe, with many fleeing south.

He reported that colleagues had been imprisoned, tortured, or killed, and that hospitals were left exposed without protection under international law.

According to reports, nearly half a million Gaza City residents have fled in anticipation of a major Israeli ground offensive.

The offensive, part of the regime’s so-called Gideon Chariots II assault, aims to bring the city, the Gaza Strip’s largest urban area, under wholesale occupation.

In all, the genocide has claimed the lives of around 65,300 Palestinians, mostly women and children, since its onset on October 7, 2023.

The fatalities include more than 1,700 medical personnel, according to Gaza’s health ministry.

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