From the Liveblog of
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
American nurse who left Gaza describes kids with burns, starvation in Strip
Lazar Berman is The Times of Israel's diplomatic reporter
Emily Callahan, an American nurse who was in Gaza with Doctors without Borders (MSF), describes the reality in southern Gaza before she managed to cross through Rafah into Egypt a week ago.
She evacuated to Khan Younis, where she shared a shelter with 35,000 internally displaced in a single complex.
“There were children with just massive burns down their faces, down their necks, all over their limbs,” she tells CNN.
Callahan says food and water were desperately low, and the MSF staff had to count calories by the end. “We would have either starved to death or run out of water” were it not for her local staff, she says.
There were four toilets for the tens of thousands of Gazans, she adds.
Callahan says that her personal safety was compromised, as angry locals accused her and her local staff of being Israelis or being traitors.
“My heart is in Gaza,” she says, “it will stay in Gaza.”
