Mads Gilbert, the Norwegian doctor in Gaza, interviewed by sky news;
YouTube - Doctor Decries Israeli Attacks
TRANSCRIPT:
Just a little bit more than an hour ago, the Israelis bombed the central fruit market in Gaza City, and we had a mass influx of about 50 injured and between 10 and 15 killed. At the same time, they bombed an apartment house with children playing on the roof, and we had a lot of children also. It's really like a scene from Dante's Inferno. It's like hell here now. They've been bombing all night, close to 500 people have been killed, and the number of casualties is getting to two and a half thousand of which 50% are children and women.
Are your hospitals reaching capacity? Can you deal with these people?
We have been doing surgery around the clock. I've just talked to one of my colleagues in the ICU who has not slept for three days. The hospital is completely overcrowded, we are running six, seven hours.
There are injuries you just don't want to see in this world. There are children coming in with open abdomens and legs cut off. We just had a child.. we had to amputate both the legs and the arm. And the only crime they have done is being civilians, the Palestinians, living in Gaza. The relief now is not more doctors and more drugs, the relief now is to stop the bombing immediately. This cannot go on. It's a disaster.
You've talked about the civilians, the women, the children, the men who are not involved in this, but are you also getting casualties that are Hamas fighters?
To be honest, we came on New Year's Eve in the morning, I've seen ONE military person among the tens, I mean, the hundreds that we have seen and treated. So anybody who tries to portray this as sort of a clean war against another army are lying. This is an all out war against the civilian Palestinian population in Gaza, and we can prove that with the numbers.
And you have to remember, the average age of the Gaza inhabitants is 17 years. It's a very young population, and 80% are living below the poverty limit of the UN. So this is a poor and very young people, and they are able to escape absolutely nowhere because they cannot flee like other populations can in wartime, because they are fenced in and they are in a cage. So they are bombing one and a half million people in a cage. And young people, poor people, and you know, you cannot separate between the civilians and the fighters in such a situation.