‘Our death is a matter of time': Gaza medic's fear after losing 33 relatives to Israeli bombs

ITV News

23-05-2025

In the patched-together buildings of the Indonesian hospital in Gaza, an impossibly young medic does his best to save the wounded.
Hamza wears surgical scrubs but is just 21 years old. A medical student at Al Azhar University, he's been thrust by the war, ahead of time, into the brutal reality of life-saving surgery.
The Strip is now desperately short of medics. The UN estimates more than 1,400 healthcare workers have been killed since the war began.
For the past month, Hamza has been trying to document a little of what he sees, as a volunteer medic, because he believes time is running out for him too.
Israel has closed Gaza to international journalists, so we can't reach him ourselves. But over the course of four weeks, on the videos he sends us, you can see his resilience crumbling.
In the early hours of Thursday, slumped beyond exhaustion, he told us his neighbour had asked what would happen to them.
'I told him our death is only a matter of time," he said. 'But we must do something good with whatever time we have left.'
Since the ceasefire collapsed on March 18, Israel has intensified its bombing campaign. With only 22 of its 36 hospitals still functioning, none of them fully, Hamza works through the night to cope with the injured.
In the past year and a half, he says he has lost 81 family members.
As he records his most recent video message, explosions sound around him, so loud they make you jump as you watch. Hamza doesn't bat an eyelid, but he looks pale and in shock, which is little surprise.
Overnight, a building close to his home was bombed by the Israelis. He sends us videos, which show young children trapped in rubble. Hamza explains that they are more of his young relatives.
He speaks quickly, quietly, with little emotion as he describes how a house about 200 metres away from him was targeted.
'I realised that there were injuries and murders. I could hear the sound of a hammer smashing through the rubble, trying to rescue those trapped underneath'.
By the time the ambulances arrived in the morning, the tragedy was clear. 'We lost 18 martyrs," Hamza records dully. 'Most of them were women and children.'
On bad days at the Indonesian hospital, he finds himself treating his family and friends. On the worst days, they die before he can treat them.
Hamza explains how, on one shift last month, he got news at 4pm that a relative's house had been hit. 'A four-story building, a back-to-residence, had been bombed," he said.
We ask him for photos of happier times. He sends snaps from his phone of a young family gathered around a bicycle. Another of his grandmothers, smiling proudly as she hugs a younger Hamza.
They didn't survive the bombing. 'About 15 people were martyred," he said. 'My sister's children, my cousin, my grandmother, my uncle, his wife and their children.'
He tells us he's had to delete photos of his beloved nephew, because it hurt too much to look at him. He doesn't say how his sister, bereft of her children, is doing. He doesn't need to.
We ask him to describe his volunteer shifts. 'What's strange," he says, 'Is that most of the wounded martyrs we receive are women and yes, women and children.'
He pauses, 'small bodies, innocent faces. Things that leave a wound in the heart that will never heal'.
It's only three years since he turned 18.
But like every Gazan, Hamza knows his life also hangs in the balance.
In theory, hospitals like his should be the Strip's safest places, but they are regularly hit by Israel's missiles.
"I'm afraid the hospital could be bombed at any moment," he says.
'Afraid that I might be the next. But despite the fear, we keep working. We continue to provide treatment, and we will remain here until our last breath and until the last drop of hope.'