A Palestinian nephrologist at Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, Hammam Alloh, 36, was killed in an explosion over the weekend that his family blamed on an Israeli airstrike.
Known as the only kidney specialist in Gaza working through the violence, Dr. Alloh was killed along with several family members when an explosive hit the home he was sheltering in, according to the Associated Press.
Alloh’s sister, Shaymma, blamed the strike on Israel, which has not confirmed or denied that it was responsible.
Alloh’s death follows warnings from Israel to Palestinians in north Gaza to evacuate to the southern part of the besieged strip. Alloh refused to leave with his family because of his commitment to his patients, his family said.
”If I go, who treats my patients? They are not animals. They have the right to receive proper healthcare,” Alloh told the left-leaning outlet Democracy Now!
on Oct. 31, in his last interview.
“You think I went to medical school and for my postgraduate degrees for a total of 14 years, so I think about my life and not my patients? You think I went to med school to think only about my life?”
About 26 people were staying at the home of Alloh’s in-laws, located about 10 minutes away from the hospital, when the building was hit, per the AP.
Surviving members of the family found bodies, including one who was disemboweled by the blast and two buried in rubble, according to Shaymma.
Shaymma told the AP she tried contacting several aid groups, including the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, in an attempt to get medical treatment for wounded family members.
She said she was told no ambulances could come to the area because it was too dangerous.
The “precarious and unsafe conditions” of the Gaza Strip have left hospitals in northern Gaza without electricity, food, or water.
According to the World Health Organization, Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, stopped “functioning as a hospital” on Sunday, after it ran out of generator fuel and oxygen supplies.
Several injured people were moved as a result, including some babies from the neonatal unit’s incubators to a different part of the complex, as fighting continued around the vicinity.
Alloh is survived by his wife and two children, who are 4 and 5 years old. His father, his father-in,-law and his brother-in-law were killed alongside him.
Colleagues are recalling Alloh as a “committed physician, wonderful father” and “beacon of light.”
Israel launched massive airstrikes on the Gaza Strip, followed by an invasion of the north of the territory in an effort to “destroy” Hamas, following the Oct. 7 terrorist attack on southern Israel that killed some 1,200 people.
The Hamas-controlled Palestinian Health Ministry said more than 11,000 people have been killed since Israel began its “war” on Hamas.