JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Tonight marks one week since Israel launched a blitz of airstrikes in Gaza that killed hundreds of people in the span of hours and shattered a ceasefire many had hoped would spell the end of the war. Joining us now to discuss the impact on the ground is NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Hi there.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hi, Juana.
SUMMERS: So international journalists cannot get into Gaza, but you've been able to reach some American doctors who are volunteering there. And NPR's producer, Anas Baba, is there. Tell us what you've been hearing about the situation.
BATRAWY: Well, Israel's been hitting a wide range of targets in Gaza for the past week. There's currently a crew of around 10 paramedics and civil defense rescue workers that have been missing for the past day. They were on their way to assist people fleeing the south of Gaza, where Israeli ground troops are advancing and thousands of people are fleeing on foot. And in the north and Gaza City, this is what it sounded like last night from our producer's home there.
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BATRAWY: So this was going on all night, and today, Israeli airstrikes killed two journalists in separate attacks, including Hossam Shabat, a 23-year-old Al Jazeera correspondent. And last night, the military struck part of Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis in southern Gaza. This is one of the only functioning hospitals in that area.
SUMMERS: What do we know about why Israel bombed that hospital?
BATRAWY: Well, this stunning strike on this key hospital killed its intended target, and that was a senior political Hamas official that Israel says was using the hospital and its patients as human shields. Now, the attack destroyed the surgical ward, taking out critical bed space capacity. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is an American volunteer trauma surgeon in Gaza with MedGlobal, who was in Nasser Hospital when it was struck, and he sent me this voice memo after.
FEROZE SIDHWA: I mean, if you blow up part of a hospital, it doesn't work anymore. So yeah, we can't do as much as we could before. And when civilians are being killed left and right, including in their hospital bed, that's a problem if the hospital's abilities are further degraded.
BATRAWY: So the attack not only killed the senior Hamas official Israel was targeting but also his nephew, who was Dr. Sidhwa's patient - a 16-year-old named Ibrahim. He tells me the boy was about to be discharged after removing shrapnel from his colon from an Israeli airstrike on a tent area he was in.
SIDHWA: He did very well after the operation. He was kind of a spunky kid. He's kind of - he was one of those teenage boys that loves to tell you the opposite of whatever you're expecting to hear.
SUMMERS: These latest attacks by Israel have pushed the confirmed death toll in Gaza to more than 50,000 people since the war began in October 2023. That is according to Gaza's Health Ministry. What do we know about who's been killed more broadly?
BATRAWY: Well, the Health Ministry today released the list of names it has recorded so far, with their Palestinian ID numbers, their ages, their gender. This is a single-space list of names of people killed. It is 1,516 pages long. And Juana, just the first 27 pages are listed as children under 1 years old. Now, the Health Ministry says around 270 of the kids on their list are babies who were born in this war and died in this war, but the total number under 18 who were killed, according to just the list of names they've recorded, is more than 15,600 in Gaza. Now, the Health Ministry does not give a breakdown of the number of militants among the dead, but it says that more than half of all those killed are women and children.
SUMMERS: Aya, the U.N. today is reducing its footprint in Gaza, even as the humanitarian needs there are soaring. What does that decision mean for the people who are there in Gaza, who are relying on aid for survival?
BATRAWY: Well, right now, nothing has entered Gaza - no food, fuel, tents for people to live in, medical supplies. For more than three weeks, Israel has imposed this blockade to pressure Hamas to release more Israeli hostages that it's holding, without agreeing to Hamas' demand of ending the war. So what the U.N. secretary general is saying today is that the U.N. is not leaving Gaza but that with no aid entering and aid workers being killed among those targeted, the risk to U.N. staff has become intolerable.
SUMMERS: That is NPR's Aya Batrawy. Thank you.
BATRAWY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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