Dr. Aqsa Durrani, an American doctor who has been offering humanitarian work world wide for over 15 years, stated amid the harrowing scenes of loss of life and destruction in Gaza, one story particularly sticks along with her.
Discovered injured and alone after an Israeli airstrike, a 4-year-old woman was taken to a trauma area hospital in central Gaza, she instructed ABC Information.
“She was fully in shock. She was not speaking and [a colleague] determined, ‘I’ve to take this little woman dwelling and I’ve attempt to see if I might help her discover her household,'” stated Durrani, a pediatric ICU physician and an epidemiologist who labored with Docs With out Borders in Gaza earlier this 12 months.
Durrani, who stated her colleagues are working in situations which might be “incomprehensible,” just lately gained main consideration for an interview on the digital platform “People of New York.”
Palestinians collect to obtain cooked meals from a meals distribution heart within the Nuseirat refugee camp within the central Gaza Strip on Aug. 18, 2025.
Eyad Baba/AFP through Getty Photographs
“He has children round her age. He tried to feed her, he tried have his children play along with her,” Durrani instructed ABC Information. “She was fully non-emotive — for days. And for these days, he tried to seek out her household.”
He seemed within the space the place the airstrike hit — a location the place displaced folks have been sheltering — however he wasn’t capable of finding her household there, in keeping with Durrani.
“Lastly, he stated that he discovered a person who stated that he had a niece that age and that they have been staying in that space, so he introduced him to her,” Durrani stated.
“He stated that when she noticed him, she yelled out ‘ammo,’ which implies uncle in Arabic, and he or she ran to him and hugged him. And it was the primary time [my colleague] had heard her converse,” Durrani stated.
However this was just one youngster and it took days to seek out her household as a result of that they had been displaced a number of instances, Durrani instructed ABC Information.
“I stated, ‘It is so lovely that you simply took her and also you have been capable of reunite her along with her uncle.’ And he stated, ‘I’ve to do this. I’ve do this as a result of I’ve to imagine that somebody will do this for me when this occurs to me, or somebody will do this for my kids,'” Durrani stated.
“I feel the story exemplifies each facet of the horror that everybody is experiencing,” Durrani stated.
Dr. Aqsa Durrani, a pediatric ICU physician and an epidemiologist, labored with Docs With out Borders in Gaza earlier this 12 months.
ABC Information
Durrani was primarily based in central Gaza — working at a trauma area hospital there — from Feb. 24 to April 24, witnessing the tip of Israel’s ceasefire settlement with Hamas and the weekslong blockade on all humanitarian help.
Discipline hospitals — that are tents and semi-permanent buildings — have been meant to dump current hospitals. On the area hospital the place Durrani labored, they have been solely capable of present care to injured or burn sufferers, she stated.
“We couldn’t presumably present different providers with the circumstances that we have been in,” Durrani stated. “We actually needed to preserve it to lifesaving trauma service.”
“Now, a lot of the sufferers that they are receiving are injured at these supposed aid-distribution websites. They’re receiving now extra sufferers with gunshot wounds, together with kids with gunshot wounds. Every day continues to worsen and we have now simply been witnessing this genocidal violence now for months and months and it is past something that even our most skilled humanitarian colleagues can think about,” Durrani stated.
The Israel Protection Forces have beforehand stated capturing incidents at help websites have been underneath assessment, however has additionally stated in few cases that it fired “warning pictures” towards individuals who have been allegedly “advancing whereas posing a menace to the troops.”
At the least 2,018 have died attempting to get humanitarian help in Gaza and one other 15,000 have been injured since Could 28, in keeping with Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Well being.
Durrani stated her colleagues, regardless of experiencing fixed horror have been “dedicated to doing all the things in one of the best ways potential and regardless of their very own private trauma” and proceed to return in each day.
“We have had physicians who obtain their very own members of the family within the ER throughout throughout mass casualty incidents. They’re enduring these horrors and in addition working to offer care in these circumstances,” she stated.
“What I can’t stress sufficient is that they — even in these circumstances, and even regardless of relentless trauma — have been offering lovely, compassionate, evidence-based care,” Durrani stated.
Palestinians salvage gadgets from the rubble of properties destroyed in Israeli strikes on the southern al-Zeitoun neighbourhood in Gaza Metropolis on Aug. 19, 2025.
Omar Al-Qattaa/AFP through Getty Photographs
Durrani recalled in the future after they “referred to as a toddler psychiatrist, who was one of many solely youngster psychiatrists in the entire Gaza Strip, he was so apologetic that he couldn’t come to see the kids that day and instructed us that it was as a result of he was really himself displaced that day, and that he had misplaced a few of his members of the family.”
The vast majority of their sufferers have been girls and kids “although our hospital was for everybody,” she stated.
“We’d spherical on all the injured sufferers with the surgeons and go affected person by affected person. And infrequently there have been airstrikes close by, and the Palestinian docs and nurses would simply converse louder over the bombs. And simply proceed offering compassionate care to the sufferers as we continued down the road,” Durrani stated.
Meals was changing into extra scarce towards the tip of Durrani’s time in Gaza, she stated.
“A lot of our days have been really spent attempting to work with different organizations to see if we may discover any meals to provide anybody. On the finish, I used to be solely capable of present sufferers with one meal per day, and moms and kids have been sharing one portion of 1 meal,” she stated.
“I even had one mom say, ‘Is there something you may give my youngster to distract him from the starvation?’ And this was a toddler who had been burned by a fireplace that resulted from an airstrike,” she stated.
Durrani stated she believes the situations in Gaza are a “deliberate selection” made by Israeli management, and referred to as on the U.S. authorities to withdraw its help for what she referred to as “full indiscriminate” violence.
Dr. Aqsa Durrani, a pediatric ICU physician and an epidemiologist, labored with Docs With out Borders in Gaza earlier this 12 months.
ABC Information
The Israeli authorities has denied that it’s limiting the quantity of help coming into Gaza and has claimed Hamas steals help meant for civilians. Hamas has denied these claims.
Israel’s cupboard has accepted plans to develop its army marketing campaign in Gaza, drawing widespread criticism from the United Nations and key allies together with Germany. U.N. Excessive Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk stated on Aug. 8 the escalation “will lead to extra killing, extra insufferable struggling, [and] mindless destruction.”
Greater than 100 help teams have warned of “mass hunger” in Gaza, describing a dire meals scarcity because of the Israeli authorities’s siege.
Israeli authorities spokesman David Mencer pushed again, saying “there isn’t any famine” in Gaza. He blamed Hamas and referred to as the meals disaster in Gaza “a man-made scarcity engineered by Hamas.”
A USAID evaluation appeared to undercut Israeli assertions concerning the extent to which Hamas has allegedly stolen humanitarian help. A presentation reviewed by ABC Information, analyzing greater than 150 reported incidents involving the theft or lack of U.S.-funded humanitarian help in Gaza, confirmed that the group failed to seek out any proof that Hamas engaged in widespread diversion of help to trigger the quantity of starvation seen within the strip.
Durrani stated offering medical help within the Gaza Strip was an expertise not like every other.
“It is dystopian, however it elicits a really visceral response. It is simply fully unfathomable that it is really, actual, all the things round you. I entered by means of the Karam Shalom crossing and we drove by means of Rafah and Rafah was at that time, even in late February, nearly fully destroyed. It simply seemed like a dystopian actuality,” Durrani stated.
