We have been trying for many, many weeks now to try to get into Gaza. It has been impossible for us. Up until Tuesday, we were able to travel inside with some medical volunteers who are working at a newly established, newly built field hospital that has been set up by the United Arab Emirates in the southern part of Gaza. As you know, the southern part of Gaza is now very much the focus of Israel's military operations. That is exacerbating an already dire humanitarian catastrophe and leading to record numbers of civilian casualties. As we saw for ourselves, you don't have to search for tragedy in Gaza. It finds you on every street strewn with trash and stagnant water, desolate and foreboding. So we've just crossed the border into southern Gaza. This is the first time we've actually been able to get to Gaza since October 7th. And we are now driving to a field hospital that has been set up by the U.S. Up until now, Israel and Egypt have made access for international journalists next to impossible. And you can see why. Since October 7th, the Israeli military says that it has hit Gaza with more than 22,000 strikes that by far surpasses anything we've seen in modern warfare in terms of intensity and ferocity. And we really, honestly are just getting a glimpse of it here. Despite Israel's heavy bombardment, there are people out on the streets. A crowd outside a bakery. Where else can they go? Nowhere is safe in Gaza. Used to be a stadium. Arriving at the Emirati Field hospital, we meet Dr. Abdullah al Naqvi. No sooner does our tour begin when our ambulances. The battery life. And this is what you hear all the time now. Yes. At least 20 times a day. At least 20 times. A day, maybe more. Sometimes I think we refuse to it. One thing none of the doctors here have got used to is the number of children they are treating. The U.N. estimates that some two thirds of those killed in this round of the conflict have been women and children. Eight year old Jinan was lucky enough to survive a strike on her family home that crushed her femur but spared her immediate family. She was shocked to hear no morphine. She says she's not in pain. So that's how I feel. That's what I. Her mother, Hiba, was out when it happened. I went to the hospital, she says, And I came here and I found her here. The doctors told me what happened with her, and I made sure that she's okay. When she got, I was sitting next to my grandfather, and my grandfather held me, and my uncle was fine. So he is the one who took us out that don't cry. But Dr. Ahmed al Mazrui says it is hard not to. I work with all the people like I, but the children. Something that changed. Touches your heart and tests your faith in humanity. As we leave Jinan, Dr. Al Naqvi comes back with the news of casualties arriving from the strike just 10 minutes earlier. So just because they wouldn't send snow to the that young man from that. Just from the course of we just saw from the bomb, we just heard. That is my understanding. They will arrive to over two days to. A man and a 13 year old boy are wheeled in both missing limbs, both in a perilous state. With much less imagination. What's your name? What's your name? The doctor asks. Next, the notes provided by the paramedics are smeared with blood, a tourniquet improvised with a bandage. Since the field hospital opened less than two weeks ago, but has been inundated with patients, 130 of their 100 beds are already full. So let me understand this. You are now basically the only hospital around that still has some beds. I guess. Yes. Or maybe I'm very short of that because they are telling me one of the hospitals with a capacity of 200 and they are accommodating 1000 right now. And the next door hospital, I'm not very sure. They say like 50 to 200000, maybe 400 to 500 patients. So when he called me, he said they have the three patients in each bid. Please take any of them. Send as many as you can. I mean, we've been here 15 minutes. And this. Is already worse. This is what you hear. You see. In every bed another gut punch. Less than two years old, Amir still doesn't know that his parents and siblings were killed in the strike that disfigured him and embarrassed of mother. Yesterday, he saw a nurse that looked like his father. His aunt, Inaaya tells us he kept screaming. Dad, Dad! Dad. Amir is still too young to comprehend the horror all around him. But 20 year old Lama understands it all too well. Ten weeks ago, she was studying engineering at university and helping to plan her sister's wedding. Today, she is recovering from the amputation of her right leg. Her family followed Israeli military orders and fled from the north to the south. But the house where they were seeking shelter was hit in a strike by the Muslim and National. The world isn't listening to us, she says. Nobody cares about us. We have been dying for over 60 days, dying from the bombing, and nobody did anything. Words of condemnation delivered in a thin grass today. But does anyone here. Even tell us? Like Grozny, Aleppo and Mariupol. Gaza will go down as one of the great horrors of modern warfare. It's getting dark. Time for us to leave. A privilege the vast majority of Gazans do not have. Our brief glimpse from a window on to hell is ending as a new chapter in this ugly conflict unfolds. All the help is needed. Now, the death toll in Gaza as a result of Israel's frenzied bombardment currently hovers at roughly 18,000. If you do the math, extrapolating as the U.N. says, that two thirds of the casualties roughly, are civilians. That is about 11,800 civilians who have been killed in just over two months. To give you a comparison. In the first year of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to an independent research organization, some 7700 civilians were killed by US forces in 20 years in Afghanistan, according to independent research groups. Some 12,000 civilians were killed. So in just two months you're now approaching 12,000 civilians. And that's the same amount who were killed in 20 years during the US war in Afghanistan. So this is truly staggering and unprecedented. PHIL Erica. US It's an extraordinarily powerful piece because you're taking us one in and two to the personal stories. I think I've been just difficult to some degree to come by because of the conflict and the type of conflict this has been. Your reference in the piece to Grozny, Aleppo, Mariupol. You've covered so many conflict zones. You've covered some of the worst conflicts that have happened in the last several decades, if not longer. How would you compare this to us looking? It's always difficult to compare conflicts, but I would just say it is so striking that the people of Gaza have nowhere they can go, have nowhere that is safe. They are literally being told to move from the north. As the north gets bombed, they move to the south and the south gets bombed. Now they're expected to move to a different area in central Gaza. And let's be very clear. It is not easy to move around right now in Gaza. We saw almost no cars on the streets. People do not have fuel. People are afraid to try to make road runs because of the risks that that incurs. And so, of course, you are seeing a horrific impact, not just in terms of the civilian casualties that we talked about, but in terms of the humanitarian crisis. You're talking about malnutrition. You're talking about the spread of preventable diseases. We talked to the doctors who said that they're treating cases of sepsis and patients are nearly dying where these should be straightforward operations that can't be performed. They described one incident where a man had worms in a wound on his head because there is such a lack of a sanitary and sanitary environment in which to perform surgeries or operations. So this is a crisis of epic proportions. And the fact that humanitarian aid workers do not have the access that they need just makes it all the more staggering. One extra point that I really need to make here, Phil, because I think it's important. This was our first time being able to gain access into Gaza, but the journalists in Gaza have been doing heroic work. They have paid such a high price for that deadliest conflict for journalists that we have seen in decades. More than 60 journalists in Gaza alone have been killed in the last two and a half months. That is according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. So you have a perfect storm here with massive bombardment, an inability to create safe zones, an inability to get humanitarian access where it's needed, and incredibly brave journalists who are doing everything they can to tell the stories and bring the reality to the world. But the frustrating of international journalists who can't get in to try to complement and supplement their efforts. It is it is remarkable and such an. Important picture that you paint of all of those challenges in this moment. I was struck by in that field hospital, so much of what we've talked about has been what is needed in terms of medical supplies. As you just pointed out, and what that can mean, but also the electricity. And there was much talk about fuel in the beginning and fuel being needed to run generators at hospitals. How that field hospital that you were at, how was it able to operate and to run some of those machines? And is it at risk? So, Erica, because that field hospital is operated by the Emirates and because the Emirates have a normalized relationship with Israel, they are able to get supplies in, get fuel in in a way that the vast majority of hospitals in Gaza are not. And even they face very real challenges, endless bureaucracy, onerous waits at the border, trying to get those supplies in. But what the doctor said is Gaza and hospitals are referring their patients to the Emirati field hospital. They're coming in in a very bad state of shape. They don't have proper tourniquets even, which are a crucial thing in terms of stopping the bleeding. They don't have proper painkillers. The doctor told us they're needing to give vast doses of painkillers to people who are in extraordinary amounts of excruciating pain because these hospitals have just had to ration whatever minimal supplies they have. Also, this field hospital is very close to that border with Egypt. And so really, they are not a microcosm and they should not give you any reflection or idea of what those Gaza hospitals look like. They are a sort of island, and that is why they are getting so many referrals from these other hospitals that are teetering on the brink of collapse. In fact, many of them just had simply collapsed and are therefore trying to refer as many patients to this field hospital as perfect as possible to try to get them some modicum of decent care. I will continue to be struck by the line. No one's listening. It seems like every patient either wanted to say or was saying to you. Clarissa Ward It's remarkable work. And to your point, there are dozens of journalists on the ground there that have lost their lives covering this. There are dozens still there covering it every day of lost family members and your work coming in and supplementing that and adding to it is incredibly important. We appreciate your time, as always. Thank you.
