Gaza doctor pushes through horror, loss

For a few hours every day or night, Dr. Suhaib Alhamss tries to sleep on a thin mattress in an operating room. He swings in and out of half-consciousness, both too tired to open his eyes and too tense to let go. Thunderous shellfire often rattles the windows of the hospital he directs in the southern Gaza Strip.

- ISABEL DEBRE AND NAJIB JOBAIN

Dr. Suhaib Alhamss prepares for surgery at Kuwaiti Hospital in Rafah.

But the worst sounds, Alhamss said, come from inside Kuwaiti Hospital: the cries of tiny children with no parents and enormous wounds. The panicked screams of patients jolted awake to the realization that they’ve lost a limb.

The Israel-Hamas war, which started 100 days ago Sunday, has exposed him, his staff and the people of Gaza to a scale of violence and horror unlike anything they had seen before. It has rendered his hometown unrecognizable.

“This is a disaster that’s bigger than all of us,” Alhamss, 35, said by phone between surgeries.