Surgeon breaks down in parliament explaining how IDF drones target children
PoliticsJOE
1,714,891 views Nov 13, 2024
Ex-NHS surgeon Nizam Mamode broke down as he told the international development committee what he witnessed when working as a surgeon in Gaza.
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Transcript
0:00What I think I found particularly disturbing was that um a bomb would drop
0:077 secondsmaybe on a crowded tented area and then the drones would come down and
0:1616 secondsplease take your time. It's we're incredibly grateful. I would like to start this the very first session of the international development select
0:2323 secondscommittee. Uh it is a new committee that we've got here for this new parliament and it is my great honor that our very
0:3030 secondsfirst witness is professor Nazim Mammud who is a professor of transplant surgery. Um but uh Nazam you're here in
0:3939 secondsfront of us because you have recently returned from Gaza um and doing some work in the hospitals over there. Uh we
0:4646 secondsreally appreciate uh you coming and speaking to us today. Uh it's very difficult to get firsthand testimony obviously about what's going on uh in
0:5555 secondsGaza at the moment. So thank you for coming and um sort of sharing your experiences. Uh I wonder if you could
1:021 minute, 2 secondssort of properly introduce yourself um and what you were actually doing out there and when you came back. Yes. So uh um I'm no longer a professor of
1:101 minute, 10 secondstransplant surgery. I retired from the NHS a couple of years ago uh and I've spent my time doing work overseas. So I
1:171 minute, 17 secondshad a a month um in Gaza mid August to midepptember working in NASA hospital uh with medical aid for Palestinians.
1:261 minute, 26 secondsUm and I'm happy to tell you about my experiences there. Please te tell us a so when did you go? Why did you go? Why
1:361 minute, 36 secondsdid I go? Uh because I thought I had the skill set that could help. Um uh I did when I was sitting in the
1:431 minute, 43 secondsconvoy um going in across the border, I did think have second thoughts, but it was too late then to get out of the
1:511 minute, 51 secondsconvoy. Um and I think when when we crossed the border, um the first the first thing was really a complete sense
1:591 minute, 59 secondsof shock. Um what did you see? What did you smell? You see a landscape that looks as though it reminded me of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Um, devastation,
2:112 minutes, 11 secondsbuildings reduced to rubble for miles around as far as you can see. Uh,
2:152 minutes, 15 secondsnothing growing, no people, a few looters here and there, but nothing. Uh,
2:222 minutes, 22 secondsyou drive through that for about 20 minutes.
2:262 minutes, 26 secondsUm, and then you get to the central part of southern Gaza. Um, which was the uh
2:352 minutes, 35 secondsdesign designated the green zone. I can't I can't bring myself to call it safe zone or humanitarian zone because it was neither. Um, that green zone
2:442 minutes, 44 secondshouses about 1.3 million people. What sort of area is that? Probably about the size of city of London.
2:512 minutes, 51 secondsum you can walk across it fairly easily if if it was safe to do so. Um and a large part of it comprises of of tents.
3:013 minutes, 1 secondUm uh and when I say tents, some of those are proper tents. Many of them are just
3:083 minutes, 8 secondspieces of carpet and plastic stuck onto sticks. Um and these are in the middle of the road, side of the road, every
3:163 minutes, 16 secondspossible space. There's no running water, no sanitation, no electricity obviously. Um, and people are having to
3:263 minutes, 26 secondsroll those up and move on at very very short notice. Um, time and time again.
3:333 minutes, 33 secondsMost people have moved six or seven times. What does it sound, smell? We um Well,
3:413 minutes, 41 secondsthe sound is mainly of two things. One is drones. So there's constant drones.
3:463 minutes, 46 secondsUm, and the drones existed before uh October last year. Um, it's been a feature of Palestinian life for some
3:553 minutes, 55 secondstime. Um, but now um the drones inspire fear, I think, and they inspire fear in
4:044 minutes, 4 secondsme. Um uh and when I used to debate about sleeping outside on the stairs or inside in this very crowded hot room, um
4:134 minutes, 13 secondspart of that decision was whether the drones had the ability to pick me off when I was on the stairs. Um they identify you. Sorry. Identify you. No,
4:224 minutes, 22 secondsshoot me. So that's what they do. Um those drones are surveillance drones,
4:264 minutes, 26 secondsbut they are also uh drones um that that shoot people regularly. Um, and I can tell you more about some of the people
4:344 minutes, 34 secondsI've operated on who who experienced that. So, you have this constant
4:404 minutes, 40 secondswine which is very um psychologically very affecting because it represents danger and it's and it's constantly
4:484 minutes, 48 secondsthere. And the other sound that you hear um are bombs which were going off every
4:564 minutes, 56 secondshour or two throughout the month that I was there. Um and we would be we spent the whole month in the hospital. We
5:055 minutes, 5 secondsdeemed it um not safe to travel. Um and we were aware that there was a curfew.
5:125 minutes, 12 secondsSo we wanted to be in the hospital if casualties arrived at night. Um we did have a guest house. We didn't want to stay there partly because of the travel
5:215 minutes, 21 secondsbut also because one of the MAP guest houses had been bombed in January of this year. Um, so we stayed in the
5:295 minutes, 29 secondshospital uh and a missile strike or or an artillery shell would explode in the vicinity and the whole building would
5:385 minutes, 38 secondsshake. Um, windows would rattle. Um, you know, you would look out the window or run outside to see how close it was. It
5:465 minutes, 46 secondswas a constant feature of life. Um we felt we were relatively safe um because we thought it's unlikely
5:555 minutes, 55 secondsthere'll be a direct strike on the hospital. But for those 1.3 1.4 million people um in that green zone, they were
6:046 minutes, 4 secondsconstantly being bombed um day and night. Um, and what I think I found
6:126 minutes, 12 secondsparticularly disturbing was that um, a bomb would drop maybe on a crowded
6:196 minutes, 19 secondstented area and then the drones would come down and please take your time. It's we're
6:286 minutes, 28 secondsincredibly grateful that you're making the time to be here today and I can only imagine just how it has impacted you and
6:376 minutes, 37 secondswill continue to impact you and I I I feel because you can't unsee what you've seen but being able to share that with
6:456 minutes, 45 secondsus really helps us hold legislators particularly to account. Um so we do appreciate the time that you're making for us today. Thank you.
6:566 minutes, 56 secondsSo the drones would come down and pick off civilians, children,
7:027 minutes, 2 secondsand we had description after description. This is not, you know, an occasional thing. This was day after day after day, operating on children who
7:117 minutes, 11 secondswould say, "I was lying on the ground after a bomber dropped and this quadcopter came down and hovered over me
7:187 minutes, 18 secondsand shot me." And the that's a clearly a deliberate act
7:257 minutes, 25 secondsand it was a persistent act persistent targeting of civilians day after day. We had one or two mass casualty incidents
7:357 minutes, 35 secondsevery day and that meant 10 to 20 dead 20 to 40 seriously injured. Now a
7:427 minutes, 42 secondshospital like guys where I used to work guys in St. Thomas's might get one or two a year. We had one or two a day. Um,
7:507 minutes, 50 secondsand 60 to 70% of the people we treated were women and children. I um I'm I'm sorry to do this draw you a little. You
7:597 minutes, 59 secondssay children. Um, I wonder if you could tell us sort of the ages of the children and you say that they they said that
8:078 minutes, 7 secondsthey were lying on the ground from a a bomb shock. Um, do you believe them? Oh yeah,
8:158 minutes, 15 secondsabsolutely. I mean, a seven-year-old is not going to make up a story. We're talking little children, not not late
8:228 minutes, 22 secondsteens. Well, from the majority of of the of the um children who were casualties
8:298 minutes, 29 secondswere young children, but we had casualties in their teens. We had women in their 30s. Um and it was a very
8:378 minutes, 37 secondsconsistent story. Um, and the story would be given as soon as they came into
8:458 minutes, 45 secondsthe emergency department. So, I'm absolutely no reason to doubt this. Um,
8:518 minutes, 51 secondsuh, and the the the bullets that the drones fire are these small cuboid pellets. Um, and I fished a number of
9:019 minutes, 1 secondthose out of the abdomen of small children. I think the youngest I operated on was a three-year-old. um who
9:099 minutes, 9 secondshad a major injury to the artery in her neck. Um and we used the last
9:189 minutes, 18 secondsum shunt which is a device you use to um bypass the the artery and the neck to
9:249 minutes, 24 secondskeep supplying blood to the brain. We use the last one in the hospital um uh because those kinds of things are just
9:339 minutes, 33 secondsnot available. Um uh she died uh about three or four days later from infection.
9:419 minutes, 41 secondsYou believe it was deliberate targeting?
9:439 minutes, 43 secondsAbsolutely. No, absolutely no question in my mind and I and it's been uh it's been the experience of so many
9:529 minutes, 52 secondshealthcare workers who've documented it time and time and time again. Um but my personal experience and those of my colleagues was this was clearly
10:0110 minutes, 1 secondpersistent deliberate targeting of civilians. and I've worked in a number of conflict zones um in different parts of the world. I was there at the time of
10:0910 minutes, 9 secondsthe Iran in genocide. Um I've never seen anything on this scale ever and that was
10:1810 minutes, 18 secondsalso the view of all the experienced colleagues that I worked with. Um one of the surgeons in my team had been to
10:2610 minutes, 26 secondsUkraine five times and said this is 10 times worse.
10:3110 minutes, 31 secondsNormally in a conflict zone, you would have a front line. You'd have fighting going on between um two sets of forces
10:3910 minutes, 39 secondsand you might get some civilians injured in in that um in that exchange. There doesn't seem to be a front line.
10:4710 minutes, 47 secondsThere just seems to be 1.4 million people trapped. They can't leave and having bombs dropped on them on a daily
10:5510 minutes, 55 secondsbasis and then drones coming in and shooting them. Um, and there's plenty of evidence um out there uh from from
11:0511 minutes, 5 secondsIsraeli soldiers that that's what's going on. But we saw it, you know, we saw the results of it.
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