Doctors in Gaza recently described how they had struggled to treat dozens of patients with unusually deadly burns consistent with white phosphorus weapons, inflicted during Israel’s three-week war in Gaza.
Nafiz Abu Shabaan, head of the burns unit at Shifa hospital, said 60 to 70 patients died in his unit from severe burns unlike any he had seen before. Patients with relatively small burn injuries, who should survive, were dying unexpectedly.
His account, with evidence from survivors, corroborated mounting evidence from groups such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International that the Israeli military fired phosphorus shells into populated areas of Gaza in direct violation of international humanitarian law. Amnesty said it believed Israel is guilty of a war crime. The use of white phosphorus in civilian areas is prohibited by UN conventions.
The Israeli military has either denied using white phosphorus or said only that it uses weapons ”in compliance with international law”.
Last Monday the military said it would launch an internal investigation. Israel’s Ma’ariv newspaper said Israel had admitted using phosphorus munitions, but only in open areas. Abu Shabaan said he and his staff had been stunned by the ”unusual wounds”.
”It starts with small patches and in hours it becomes wide and deep and in some cases reaches the point where even the general condition of the patient deteriorates rapidly and unexpectedly,” he said.
Doctors noticed a ”very bad odour from the wound”, he said. Many patients also suffered unexpected and severe toxicity and had to be rushed into intensive care. In one case a consultant anaesthetist suffered minor burns on his chest from material sprayed from a patient’s wounds during an operation.
Relatively small burns were causing death. ”A patient with 15% burns should not die, but we are seeing cases where they do,” Abu Shabaan said. He believed the wounds were consistent with phosphorus. He described one patient, a girl of three sent for a scan because of a head wound. ”We opened the wound and smoke came from it,” he said. Surgeons used forceps to pull a substance from the wound that was ”like dense cotton and started to burn until it disappeared.” The child died.
At the Shifa burns unit, Sabbah Abu Halima described how several shells hit her house early in the war, killing her husband, Sa’ad Allah, and four of their children: Abdul Rahim (14), Zayid (10), Hamza (8) and Shahed (15 months old). She herself suffered severe burns, which doctors said seemed consistent with white phosphorus.
There were 16 members of the family in the house when the shells struck. ”I fell on the ground and there was a fire. The room was full of smoke and it smelt bad,” Sabbah said. Her wounds smoked for several hours.
The Israeli strike on the warehouses in the main UN compound in Gaza City two weeks ago was also believed to involve white phosphorus shells. Small pieces of burning material were seen after the blast. Last week the remains of hundreds of tons of food and aid in the warehouses were still smouldering. The jagged remains of an artillery shell lay outside.
Doctors at the Shifa are now keeping tissue biopsies from each patient. ”We are asking international organisations to send experts to test which weapons were used and tell us how to deal with such injuries,” Abu Shabaan said. ”I’ve been here since 1985 and I’ve never seen something like this.” —