Australian doctors in Gaza recount horrific bloodshed and trauma

Two Australian doctors returning from Gaza told AFP they had witnessed “slaughterhouse” scenes in the devastated territory, describing children torn apart by relentless Israeli bombardments and hospitals overwhelmed by the dead and wounded.

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Saya Aziz, an anaesthetist, said that while images of the destruction in Gaza have flooded global media, they still fail to capture the full reality on the ground.

“The things that you didn’t get through the video was the smell, the wailing, the distress of the parents crying, witnessing their children dying, suffering in pain,” Aziz said on Saturday.

What Gaza was witnessing, she added, was “mass casualty after mass casualty”.

“Torn, disintegrated bodies, blood, broken heads, broken arms, chopped limbs not just chopped, like disintegrated,” she said. “You would never see such scenes in your life, blood everywhere... It’s like a slaughterhouse.”

Aziz and fellow doctor Nada Abu Al Rub, a Palestinian-Australian, had been on a four-week mission to Gaza. They left the territory on Sunday morning.