A FORMER NHS surgeon who recently returned from a hospital in Gaza broke down while testifying about children being “shot by IDF quadcopters”.
Professor Nizam Mamode, who worked at Nasser hospital for a month between August and September this year, was speaking at Westminster's international development committee on Tuesday.
“What I think I found particularly disturbing was that, a bomb would drop maybe on a crowded tented area, and then the drones would come down,” he said (below) – before getting visibly emotional.
Watch Professor Nizam Mamode break down as he tells @CommonsIDC about the systematic & persistent targeting of civilians by Israeli drones immediately after they drop bombs on areas of civilian population living in tents. Thanks to @SarahChampionMP's words as he composes himself. pic.twitter.com/7DeinujKzH
— Gary Spedding (@GarySpedding) November 12, 2024
Committee chair, Labour MP Sarah Champion, reassured Mamode – telling him he could take all the time he needs.
The former NHS surgeon then went on: “The drones would come down and pick off civilians – children. We had description after description – this is not an occasional thing."
He added: “This was day after day after day, operating on children – who would say ‘I was lying on the ground after a bomb had dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me and shot me’.
“So, that's clearly a deliberate act and it was a persistent act – the persistent targeting of civilians day after day. We had one or two mass casualty incidents every day.”
Responding to Mamode’s testimony, Champion said it was “profound and deeply chilling”.
She added: “On this evidence, the UK needs to take seriously the prospect of international humanitarian law having been egregiously broken in Gaza.
“The supposedly safe area in which he worked was neither a ‘safe’ nor a ‘humanitarian’ zone, he said, with more than one million people crammed into an increasingly small area. He recalled operating on patients without access at times to basic medical supplies like swabs or sterile gloves.
“Professor Mamode told us that he has worked in a number of dangerous conflict zones, including the Rwandan genocide. Yet still he had never seen anything on the scale of what he saw in Gaza. This view was no outlier; it was also that of his experienced colleagues, one of whom had travelled to Ukraine several times.”
Champion went on: “He saw children with sniper injuries to the head, children shot by drones – evidence, he said, of targeting by the Israeli military. He told the Committee he was aware of five armoured UN convoys, used to travel into and out of Gaza, shot at by Israeli forces.
“But the conflict’s devastating direct impact on the population is just the tip of the iceberg. Professor Mamode informed us that many of the ancillary services that existed before the war – very good hospitals, staffed by very good medics – have been destroyed.
“The Committee will do all we can to act on Professor Mamode’s extraordinary testimony and ensure his experiences are heard loud and clear. If leaders are not yet listening, they should be by now.”
