In the Nasser Hospital mortuary, a forensic doctor examines a body, takes a photo of it and notes its name and the location of the bombing that killed him. The process aims to list the “martyrs” of the ongoing war between Hamas and Israel.
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“Between midnight and noon, 17 martyrs and five other dead people who died of natural causes arrived at our house,” doctor Nahed Abou Taaema, director of the Nasser Hospital in Khan Younes in the south of the Strip, told AFP Gaza.
On his computer, he shows a program that lists “martyrs,” a term for Palestinians killed in the conflict with Israel, on one tab and other deaths on another tab.
“The coroner prepares a full report, seals it and sends it to the patient administration, which is responsible for entering the information into a computer database linked to the Ministry of Health,” he adds.
This ministry, which reports to the government of Gaza’s ruling Islamist Hamas movement, published on October 26 a nomination list of nearly 7,000 Palestinians who have been killed since the war with Israel broke out on October 7. That number has since risen to over 8,300 deaths, most of them civilians.
The ministry wanted to demonstrate its credibility after the number of Palestinian deaths in the war was questioned by American President Joe Biden and its unwavering support for Israel since the beginning of the conflict, triggered by an attack of unprecedented magnitude by Hamas in which more people died According to the authorities, there were more than 1,400 deaths in Israel, mostly civilians.
Using information provided by coroners, patient administration staff fill out a form with details of each “martyr” before entering the information into the computerized database.
“People who die of natural causes are not taken to the mortuary for coroner’s examination unless the death appears suspicious,” explains Dr. Abou Taaema.
“Collapsed”
Some victims of the strikes are registered as “unknown” once their deaths are confirmed by coroners, and their files are updated with their identities after the bodies are identified by families.
For Rizeq Abou Rok, a medic with the Palestinian Red Crescent, transporting dead and wounded from Israeli bombing raids to Nasser Hospital has become routine since the start of the war.
But nothing, not even daily proximity to death, could prepare him for the horror he believes he experienced on October 22nd.
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After a report of a bomb attack at a cafe on the Rio in Khan Younès, Mr. Abou Rok, 24, rushed there in an ambulance with fear in his stomach, knowing that his father, Wael Abou Rok, 48, and other members of his family sought refuge there.
“I was convinced that I was evacuating the bodies of people I cared deeply about,” he said. When he arrived on scene, he had to treat a seriously injured man and give him first aid before transporting him to Nasser Hospital.
“When I arrived, I rushed to the emergency room where I saw my father. He was hit in the head. “I immediately understood that he was dead,” he says emotionally. “I collapsed and lost my nerve. The nurses took me outside to calm me down.”
When he came to, he returned to the emergency room to find out if there were any other relatives among the dead.
“I found them one by one, Ajnad, Jamal and Talal Abou Rok, Mohammad Abou Rjeileh and Ahmad Qodeih. They were all killed along with ten other people in the cafe,” he says.
Their bodies were transferred to the mortuary for examination by the coroner before being added to the macabre reports from Nasser Hospital.