It was about 2 or 2:30 in the morning when Dr. Feroze Sidhwa was startled out of sleep by the sound of the door to his living quarters smashing into the closet behind it. It was March 18 and Israel had resumed its bombing campaign in Gaza, bringing a forceful end to the ceasefire agreement.
The 43-year-old is currently on his second volunteer trip to Gaza, working at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis. He entered the territory on March 6, when the sounds of war were silenced.
But soon, the all-too-familiar sounds of chaos and explosions filled the air, and Sidhwa was plunged into yet another mass casualty event.
“On the morning of the 18th, things changed pretty dramatically,” he told CBC News in a video call on Thursday. “But I expected the attack to resume in full force while I was here so it wasn’t exactly a surprise.”
The ceasefire went into effect on Jan. 19, a three-phased deal that included hostage and prisoner releases while delaying talks on Gaza’s future to a next stage of the truce.
Israel has launched new airstrikes on targets in Gaza while its ground forces begin a renewed ground operation. Hamas responded by firing rockets at Tel Aviv.
The first phase, a 42-day period primarily focused on hostage releases, expired on March 1 without agreement on a second phase.
On March 18, Israel resumed its bombing campaign, resulting in almost 600 dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and leaving the first phase of the ceasefire in shambles.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said this was “just the beginning” as Israel launched a ground invasion to put pressure on Hamas to release all remaining hostages.
Sidhwa, a trauma surgeon based in California, says he and his colleagues were at the emergency room at Nasser within 15 minutes of being woken up and he was seeing patients 10 minutes after that.
He was in his first surgery of the day an hour later.
Shrapnel injuries
He says one of the first things he had to do that day was explain to a father that his daughter would not survive her injuries.
“There was this three-year-old girl with multiple shrapnel injuries to her face and head, agonal breathing [signifying that oxygen is not getting to the brain] and a very weak pulse,” he said. “Even though she was technically not dead yet, she was going to die and there was nothing we could do about it.”
The hospital saw between 250 and 300 people that day, of which “40 or 50 per cent were women and children,” he said.
All the injuries he saw were from shrapnel, he said.
“Very small but very powerful shrapnel that is penetrating people’s bodies, posing injuries to their hearts, their lungs, their abdomen and their brain.”
He says he participated in six operations on Tuesday during the initial wave of surgeries — three children, two women and one middle-aged man.
He said the continuous bombing campaign lasted from three to five hours while he was attending to patients. “Once you start working, you really get lost in that.”
Hundreds of deaths, injuries
In a statement to CBC News, Doctors Without Borders said its teams responded to an “influx” of patients in southern and central Gaza on Tuesday.
At Nasser, where Sidhwa is based, the team received 55 dead and 113 injured, the statement said. A field hospital in the city of Deir al Balah received 10 injured; at the city’s Al Aqsa Hospital, medical workers received 20 dead and 68 injured patients.
Sidhwa says surgical operations stopped in the afternoon after medical teams finally gained some semblance of control over the emergency room.
Gazan people “cannot afford such violence and devastation to start again,” and a sustained ceasefire is needed, said the Doctors Without Borders statement. The organization also called on Israel to allow aid and basic goods into the territory.
Tom Fletcher, a senior United Nations official, said in a briefing to the UN Security Council that the organization’s “worst fears materialized” with the resumption of hostilities in Gaza.
It also returned “abject fear” to the people in the territory, he added.
Uneasy about own safety
The war was sparked after a Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023, killed about 1,200 people and took some 250 others captive, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel responded with a military campaign in which more than 49,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gaza health officials. Thousands more are feared still buried and uncounted under the rubble.
But while the ceasefire brought some relative calm to the strip while it lasted, the effects of the war could be seen both inside and outside the hospital.
While he spends much of his time in the hospital, Sidhwa says he hasn’t ventured out into the neighbourhood since Tuesday, “for obvious reasons.”
But before the attacks, he spent time observing the apocalyptic scene of the streets and buildings of Khan Younis.
“Every building is damaged in some way, every single one,” he said.
“Some of them are pancaked, some of them… the floors have just all collapsed on each other, some have the front shorn off,” he said.
While he wasn’t surprised by the resumption of the war, Sidhwa said being a volunteer medic in Gaza does make him feel uneasy about his safety.
“It’s hard to pretend [the explosions] don’t frighten you,” he said, “but if one wants to work in the Gaza Strip, one must accept that the Israelis can kill you at any moment.”
