'Bombs just started to rain down': Saskatoon nurse recounts working in Gaza when Israel broke ceasefire
According to Gaza's health ministry, Israeli attacks have killed more than 53,000 people in nearly 20 months
After working two stints in Gaza, a Saskatoon nurse says she feels a "ton of guilt" watching news emerging from the region now that she's back in Canada.
"I miss the people that I work with every single day," Casey Eberl said. "They're always in my mind. Always."
Eberl remembers the scene in Gaza when Israel broke a fragile ceasefire by launching heavy airstrikes in March.
"It was unlike anything any of us could have expected. We were sleeping," Eberl said.
"The bombs just started to rain down and we all hibernated that night and our clinics had mass casualty incidents. The hospital I was working at had mass casualty incidents and it only got worse from there."
The airstrikes broke a two-month ceasefire with Hamas, as Israel vowed to use force to free its remaining hostages in the territory. The strikes killed more than 400 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and haven't stopped since.
The decades-long conflict escalated on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people. In response, Israel launched a military campaign that has devastated much of Gaza.
Israel's military campaign, which its leaders have said is aimed at uprooting Hamas and securing the release of the hostages, has killed more than 53,000 people and displaced practically all of Gaza's more than two million Palestinians in nearly 20 months of war, according to Gaza's health ministry. Most of the people Israel has killed are civilians, including more than 16,500 children under the age of 18, the ministry says.
Eberl was serving in Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, which Israel has now struck multiple times.
An airstrike at the hospital killed five people on March 23, including a Hamas political leader and Palestinian medics, Hamas said. On May 13, airstrikes at Nasser and another hospital killed 18 people.
Eberl said she was treating patients at Nasser Hospital for two months ending in April. She was also there for a six-week period last fall. She said hearing from her Palestinian colleagues motivated her to go back.
"I'm extremely lucky that I got to see them again. Especially with the war going on, you never know if the people that you love, the people that you worked with and cared for, might be there again if you get to go back," Eberl said on CBC's The 306 radio show with host Peter Mills.
Eberl said she saw a spike in the number of patients with blast injuries, infectious diseases and malnutrition because of a lack of access to clean water. She said she has never experienced a conflict like this before, and was looking to her Palestinian colleagues for how to navigate the situation.
"There's no textbook or manual for something like that. And so I really looked to the Palestinian staff and to be honest, they led me. They told me what they needed, how I could support them, and I just tried to do my best to listen to their needs," she said. "They were the boss. They were the guides."
Eberl said everyone she knows in Gaza has lost a family member.
"There's nothing like the cry of a parent after they've lost their child."
Eberl worked with Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French name, Médecins Sans Frontières), a non-governmental organization that provides emergency medical care to people in conflict zones, disasters or epidemics.
Sana Bég, executive director of Doctors Without Borders Canada, said five Canadian health-care professionals with the organization were serving in Gaza as of Monday.
"We're dealing with the very real impact of having our medical facilities under constant attack."
A United Nations-backed assessment released earlier this month said the entire Gaza population is at critical risk of famine.
Israel announced on May 18 that it will allow a limited amount of aid into the Palestinian enclave, but it was not immediately clear when aid would enter Gaza, or how. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would work to ensure that Hamas militants will not control distribution and aid does not reach militants.
Bég said the teams in Gaza are also in urgent need of medical supplies like gloves, medications that alleviate pain and potable drinking water.
"The heartbreaking reality of our teams having to witness parents anguish in their eyes as their children scream in pain, as we're sort of removing the dressings and giving them a new dressing, and we have no pain medication to be able to provide them."
A total of 11 Doctors Without Borders staff have been killed in Gaza, according to Bég.
"Inherently we're talking about a population that is living life in a death trap. It is hell on earth," Bég said. "This is a man-made crisis."
Canada, the U.K. and France issued a joint statement on May 19 opposing the expansion of Israel's military operations in Gaza and calling for Israel to immediately allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza. Bég said more needs to be done by those in power to help stop the war.
"Doctors alone and medical professionals alone, we cannot be the ones that stop wars. We're not going to be able to stop the bombing of medical facilities, and this is where we need leaders to be able to act."
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With files from Reuters