Inside Israeli hospital after ‘unprecedented’ Hamas terror attacks in which 700 people were treated in first 18 hours

Located about 40 miles from the Gaza Strip, Soroka Medical Center is where the wounded were sent after Hamas terrorist attacks in southern Israel last weekend.

“The magnitude of injuries suffered by civilians, children and the elderly is unprecedented,” Dr. Shlomi Codish, Soroka’s executive director, told The Post. “In the first 18 hours, we saw 700 people and treated them under fire, literally. Bombs were falling around us and air raid sirens were sounding.”

Working 36-hour shifts, staff have seen the unimaginable.

“What human being shoots young women in their beds, while they sleep?” Codish asked. “We had a patient who came in in her pajamas after being shot in bed. What are they protected against?

“A pregnant woman came in after being shot in the abdomen,” Codish recalled. “She survived, but the baby did not: she died in a terrorist attack before being born.”

The pace of patient arrivals was so intense that doctors at the Soroka Medical Center, 40 kilometers from the Gaza Strip, operated on patients whenever possible. Soroka Medical Center Sorokoa medical staff treated patients with serious injuries, including one who was shot in bed while sleeping.Soroka Medical Center

The influx was so intense that medical treatments were administered whenever possible.

“We performed the surgery in the emergency department because patients did not have time to get to the operating room,” he said. “Of 700, 18 died.”

Adding to the tension was the fact that the doctors themselves had to leave their relatives behind – “in the Negev, which was the hot zone of the terrorist attack,” Codish said – knowing that they could be killed or kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. .

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“At all times we were aware of staff members who had been killed or were missing,” he added.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited the wounded in Soroka.Soroka Medical Center

Codish and his crew have experience treating combat wounds, but these were something else entirely.

“At a military event, soldiers wear protective gear,” Codish said. “A shot when you are protected causes major damage, but not major injuries. For young civilians, killed while enjoying a party, that is not the case.”

Helicopters took some of the seriously injured to Soroka, while others arrived by ambulance, or however they could. “People shot in settlements where emergency medical services could not reach walked to the highway and were picked up by passing motorists,” Codish said. “People… walked for miles with gunshot wounds and distanced themselves from terrorists with assault rifles.”

Dr. Shlomi Codish, CEO of Soroka, heard air raid sirens as he drove to the hospital, but did not stop to take cover. Soroka Medical Center Patients were transported to Soroka by helicopter and 700 of them were transported out, to make room for what staff fear will be a new round of injured citizens. Soroka Medical Center

A police officer, wounded by bullets in both legs in the city of Ofaquim, “managed to reach the road where he met an ambulance. He is lucky to be alive.”

Codish and his crew know the victims will keep coming. “We flew the first 700 to create space for the next wave,” the doctor said. “They left in fleets of helicopters and headed to hospitals further away from Gaza. “We need to make space.”

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Source: vtt.edu.vn

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