Renowned doctor at Al-Shifa Hospital killed in Gaza City, health ministry official says
Hospital director calls Dr. Hammam Alloh an important witness to the military siege
An internal medicine physician who told the world about the dire hardships in frequent dispatches from Gaza's Al-Shifa Hospital has been killed, an official with the territory's Health Ministry said Tuesday.
Reports that Dr. Hammam Alloh died in an Israeli airstrike last weekend near the hospital have been circulating for the past few days, but reports of a missile strike as the reason for his death have not been confirmed. Reports about others killed vary.
Alloh, a kidney specialist who lived in Gaza City, was killed with his stepfather, said Dr. Medhat Abass, spokesperson for Gaza's Health Ministry, on Tuesday.
The doctor's sister, Shaymma Alloh, told The Associated Press that the house where 26 members of her family were sheltering was hit by a missile strike late Saturday. She said the dead included her brother, father and two in-laws.
According to Shaymma, her entire extended family was staying with her brother at their in-laws' house, a 10-minute walk from the hospital.
Doctor described dire hospital situation to outside world
News organization Democracy Now!, which has published several interviews with the doctor, reported on Monday that he died on Saturday when an artillery shell struck his wife's home, killing him, his father, brother-in-law and father-in-law.
"Yes, he died," the hospital's director, Mohammad Abu Salmiya, told CBC News on Tuesday.
Salmiya said he did not have further details but that he had heard there was bombing near the hospital and near Alloh's home.
"We lost an important medical staff [member]," Salmiya said.
He described the doctor as a witness for the world to the dire conditions at the hospital, which has run out of fuel and power, making it difficult to tend to the 500 patients inside.
In one of his last interviews, the 36-year doctor spoke to CBC last Friday, telling the network he was planning to go into work the next day. The nephrologist said his patients needed daily care if they had renal failure and needed dialysis.
At the same time, he was trying to care for his wife and their three young children at home. Still, he felt compelled to keep working at Al-Shifa, he said.
"I can't even think of not going," he said. "I don't have an option ... because if I don't go, this means I'm giving up on life. I took an oath as a physician, and I will not betray that oath."
Hospital staff deny knowledge of Hamas tunnels
Gaza's largest hospital has become a focal point in the five-week-old war between Israeli forces and Hamas, which began after a surprise and deadly multi-front attack by Hamas militants on several communities in southern Israel.
Spokespeople for the Israel Defence Forces have repeatedly said Hamas runs its headquarters from tunnels beneath Al-Shifa, while hospital staff say they've seen no evidence of that.
Thousands fled Al-Shifa over the weekend as Israeli troops encircled it, and doctors said gunfire and explosions raged all around it on Monday. Israeli troops appeared to be only a few blocks away from the facility.
The doctor was asked during a CBC interview on Oct. 31 if he had a message for the international community.
"We have the right just like you to live in peace and freedom," Alloh said. "Help us get this. Otherwise, you'll need to revise the definition of humanity and your humanity."
With files from CBC's Brishti Basu and Briar Stewart, and The Associated Press