'Awash with blood' Gaza medics on horrors of past week

Early last Tuesday morning, within minutes of the wave of Israeli airstrikes that broke the fragile two-month ceasefire which had brought some respite to Gaza, the emergency room of al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah was full.

- Jason Burke

"At no point were there less than 65 people in ER, all with open wounds, mainly women and children... The floor was awash with blood," said Mark Perlmutter, a US-based volunteer orthopaedic surgeon working at the hospital that morning.

Just a few miles away, there were similar scenes at Nasser hospital in the southern city of Khan Younis.

"There was just wave after wave," said Tanya Haj-Hassan, a paediatric intensive care doctor.

"As soon as patients had died or been sent elsewhere and we cleared some space, more would come in. It was chaos. One doctor stepped on a corpse on the ground as he tried to do a life-saving procedure."

Palestinian medical officials say more than 200 people were killed on Tuesday morning alone across Gaza, and hundreds more injured.

Within five days, as more air strikes and shelling continued, the overall death toll in the devastated Palestinian territory in the 18-month war would reach 50,000, mostly women and children. A total of 113,274 others had been injured, the health ministry said.

Israeli military officials claim 80 "terrorist" targets in 10 minutes were attacked on Tuesday morning, including leaders and key military infrastructure.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) previously blamed high levels of civilian casualties on Hamas, accusing it of using civilians as human shields, a charge it denies.

At the Nasser hospital, more than half of adult casualties brought in on Tuesday night were given a 20-second check by surgeons then told there was nothing that could be done. Children were almost all admitted.