Airstrike kills well-known doctor who stayed to help patients
CAIRO — It was the call Shaymma Alloh had been dreading, the news from Gaza she hoped would never come: The house where 26 members of her family were sheltering was hit by a missile strike.
Among the four confirmed deaths from the strike late Saturday was her 36-year-old brother, Hammam Alloh, a renowned physician who stayed in northern Gaza to help treat patients at Shifa Hospital, which has been encircled by Israeli troops for days.
He and many relatives were staying at his in-laws’ home near the hospital because they had nowhere else to go. And that’s where surviving family members found their bodies. One was disemboweled by the blast, two more buried in rubble, she said.
The dead included Shaymma Alloh’s father and two in-laws, she said by phone Monday as she pieced together the tragedy from her home in the United States. She declined to disclose her exact location out of concern about possible repercussions.
Her brother was a wellknown kidney specialist at Gaza’s largest hospital and had conducted several interviews with American news outlet “Democracy Now!” during the recent fighting between Israel and Hamas. While thousands fled Shifa over the weekend after Israeli troops encircled the facility, Hammam chose to stay behind among hundreds of patients and displaced people who were seeking safety on the hospital’s grounds.
“You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?” he said to the outlet, explaining why he didn't flee. It was Oct. 31, his last interview. The doctor’s final days and violent death go to the core of battling narratives over how the war is conducted. Israel says it is striking Hamas fighters, while trying to avoid harm to civilians, and alleges that Hamas uses civilians as human shields. But its airstrikes and shelling, in retaliation for Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, have also killed thousands of women and children in Gaza. Palestinians and rights groups accuse Israel of recklessly harming civilians.
Throughout Sunday, Shaymma tried contacting several aid groups, including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, in an attempt to get medical treatment for the two wounded male relatives. One had a deep neck wound, and both struggled to walk. She said she was told no ambulances could come to the area because it was too dangerous.
Then on Monday morning, the Israeli army made contact. She said a relative received a phone call telling the family to leave the house and head south waving a white flag.
She said her mother was distraught by the idea of leaving loved ones unburied and scared that the family might be targeted on the journey. But her daughter convinced her otherwise.
“You have to think about the living,” Shaymma said, recounting the conversation.
She made contact with her sister-in-law, Noor, on Monday evening and discovered they had not traveled far. They were at Shifa Hospital.
While passing by the hospital, she said her family had been warned by people sheltering there that the Israeli army was shooting at Palestinians fleeing south. So they decided to stay.
“While it’s not completely safe,” she said, “I am glad they are OK.”
‘You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years so I think only about my life and not my patients?’
HAMMAM ALLOH, in an Oct. 31 interview, explaining why he stayed in Gaza