Amputations on the rise in Gaza as Israel rejects medical transfers
Israeli bullets causing extreme destruction to bones and soft tissue
Mohammad Al Ajouri is a lanky teenager who loves to run, a medal winning track star with ambitions to compete abroad.
But last month, while participating in a protest along Gaza’s border, he was struck by a bullet fired by an Israeli soldier. It penetrated his calf, shattering his leg before exiting the shin. Doctors tried to save the limb, but an infection soon spread. The leg had to be amputated.
During the past month of demonstrations along the border between Gaza and Israel, at least 17 Palestinians have suffered gunshot wounds that ultimately cost them their legs, according to the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza.
In at least three of the cases, the Israeli occupation regime rejected the transfer of wounded Gazans to the West Bank, where they could receive medical care that might have saved their limbs, according to lawyers and one of the patients’ families.
Since the protests began, Israeli occupation troops have killed 43 Palestinians and wounded more than 3,500 with live ammunition, rubber-coated steel bullets or shrapnel, the Health Ministry said. Of those, about 2,200 have suffered injuries to the legs.
The United Nations says the Israeli regime is engaged in an “excessive use of force”.
“The significant number of injuries to the lower limbs does reflect an apparent policy to target [those] limbs,” said Omar Shakir, Israel-Palestine director at Human Rights Watch in New York.
But targeting protesters’ legs “does not make the policy any less illegal,” he said. “The use of live ammunition to any part of the body invariably causes serious injury and even death.”
Ala’a Al Daly, 21, was also an aspiring athlete who had hoped to break free from life in Gaza. As a cyclist, he was training for this year’s Asian Games.
On March 30, he participated in a protest near Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip. Al Daly said he had cycled to the border with friends, who had assured him that the demonstration would be peaceful. At one point, after gunfire had erupted, he rushed to help another wounded demonstrator. That, he said, was when the bullet ripped through his knee.
Doctors in Gaza are often unable to deal with such traumatic injuries, medical groups say.
“Even at the most advanced hospital in Gaza, it felt like the 1970s,” said Salah Haj Yahia, mobile clinic director for Physicians for Human Rights in Israel. “If things remain this way, most gunshot casualties will have to undergo amputation,” he said.
Some of the amputations were carried out immediately while other victims were stabilised but needed treatment outside Gaza if the limbs were to be saved.
For Al Ajouri, the protests were a welcome distraction from life in Gaza, where jobs and hope are both rare.
The soft-spoken 17-year-old was injured at a March 30 protest after he had turned to leave.
He still smiles, his eyes crinkling, when he recalls the medals he’d won for the 400-metre dash. “My hope was to travel to the West Bank and to compete in international games, but this is no longer an option.”