West Bank unrest weighs on Palestinian doctors
Doctors in the occupied West Bank are struggling to save Palestinians from permanent disability after being shot in an upsurge of violence linked to Israeli raids targeting Palestinian militants.
At Rafidia Surgical Hospital in Nablus, in the northern West Bank, a teenager with bandaged legs was carried up the stairs by another boy.
He had been shot below the knee in overnight clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian residents of Balata, a refugee camp on the edge of the city.
The 16-year-old, whose mother soon arrived in the emergency room, was the latest Palestinian to be hit in the near daily rounds of gunfire erupting in the northern West Bank.
“There is a lot of pressure on the hospital, as a result of the various injuries and the large amount of injuries,” said Dr Fouad Nafaa, head of Rafidia’s surgical department.
The spike in violence is tied to raids launched across the West Bank in recent months by Israeli forces, many targeting armed militants in Nablus and the Jenin area further north.
The Israeli military says the often lethal raids are necessary to root out extremists involved in carrying out or planning attacks against its citizens, after a spate of deadly rampages inside the Jewish state earlier this year.
On a single day in August, medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS) treated 69 patients with gunshot wounds in Nablus after an army raid.
Nablus militant Ibrahim al-Nabulsi was one of four people killed in that raid on August 9.
Many of the wounded were taken to Rafidia, where Nafaa said the team has been receiving “very difficult” cases lately.
