Children 'with shrapnel through their hearts': Surgeon says Israel deliberately destroying Gaza health system

Dr Feroze Sidhwa tells UN Security Council international humanitarian law has been wilfully broken

A Palestinian doctor at the site of the destroyed building of Al Ahli Baptist hospital following an Israeli air strike in Gaza City, 13 April 2025. EPA

An American trauma surgeon who worked in Gaza accused Israel on Wednesday of deliberately destroying the enclave’s healthcare system.

Dr Feroze Sidhwa's accusations, which came amid heightened global scrutiny over Israel’s latest military offensive in Gaza, also said he had borne witness to the “targeting of my colleagues and the erasure of a people”.

“The medical system has not failed, it has been systematically dismantled through a sustained military campaign that has wilfully violated international humanitarian law,” Dr Sidhwa, a critical care surgeon from Stockton, California, said in an emotional address to the UN Security Council in New York.

“I did not see or treat a single combatant during my five weeks in Gaza. My patients were six-year-olds with shrapnel through their hearts and bullets in their brains, pregnant women with their pelvises obliterated and their foetuses cut in two while still in the womb.”

Dr Sidhwa carried out two medical missions in Gaza, first at the European Hospital in Khan Younis in early 2024, and then at Nasser Medical Complex in April this year.

'Skeletons draped in skin': Doctor describes the state of children in Gaza

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He recounted scenes of families sheltering in hospitals, baking bread on hotplates in emergency wards as air strikes rained down.

“Most of my patients were pre-teen children, their bodies shattered by explosions and torn by flying metal. Many died. Those who lived often awoke to find their entire families gone,” he said.

The surgeon warned that civilians are dying not only from bombardment but from starvation, disease, sepsis, exposure and despair. He accused Israel of denying Palestinians the “conditions necessary for life” and said preventing genocide means not normalising atrocities.

“Parents memorise their children’s clothing in case they must identify their remains. They pray for one piece of bread to give them before they sleep, so their children die a little less hungry if they are killed at night,” Dr Sidhwa said.

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  Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen in Jabalia, northern Gaza Strip. AP

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  Displaced Palestinians reach out with pans to collect cooked food from a community food kitchen in Jabalia. Bloomberg

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  International pressure has mounted on Israel to restart aid. Bloomberg

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  Supplies of donated food are running short. AP

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  An aid truck at the Kerem Shalom crossing after the Israeli cabinet approved the entry of nine aid trucks into Gaza. EPA

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  Aid loaded on one of three World Food Programme aid trucks crossing into Gaza at Kerem Shalom. EPA

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  Trucks loaded with aid continue to wait in the Egyptian city of Al Arish, 45 kilometres west of the Gaza border. Reuters

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  A Palestinian staff member inspects the medicine warehouse in Nasser Hospital after an Israeli strike in Khan Younis. Reuters

The UN World Health Organisation has documented around 700 attacks on health care facilities in Gaza during the war. Israel accuses Hamas of using hospitals as command centers and to hide fighters, although it has only provided evidence for some of its claims.

Since Israel escalated its military offensive in Gaza earlier this month, Palestinians have grown increasingly desperate for food, with nearly three months of border closures pushing the territory to the brink of famine.

The aid that is now coming in “is comparable to a lifeboat after the ship has sunk,” Sigrid Kaag, the UN Special Co-ordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, told the council.

“Since the resumption of hostilities in Gaza, the already horrific existence of civilians has only sunk further into the abyss. This is man-made,” Ms Kaag said.

Ms Kaag called for collective action to revive a two-state solution, stating that the high-level international conference at the UN in June presents a “critical opportunity”.

“It must launch a concrete path towards ending the occupation and realising the two-state solution,” she said.

Israel has vowed to seize control of Gaza and fight until Hamas is destroyed or disarmed and exiled. It also continues to demand that the militant group return the remaining 58 hostages, only about a third of whom are believed to be alive.

More than 54,000 people have been killed in Gaza and at least another 123,000 injured since Israel started its war in the Palestinian strip after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks killed about 1,200 people in Israel.