Healthcare workers are protected under international law yet hundreds were detained during the war. Now, some of Gaza’s most senior doctors have spoken of the violence and abuse they say they faced
Dr Issam Abu Ajwa was in the middle of performing emergency surgery on a patient with a severe abdominal injury at al-Ahli Arab hospital in central Gaza when the soldiers came for him.
“I asked them what they were doing coming into the operating theatre,” he says. “One of the soldiers pointed at me and said: ‘Are you Dr Issam Abu Ajwa?’ I said: ‘Yes, that’s me.’ And then the beating began.”
