STUCK IN PLACE

U.S. Volunteer Doctors Trapped in Gaza Under Israeli Bombs

Doctors from the U.S. and several other countries were supposed to leave days ago, but they now find themselves under fire in the Israeli incursion of Rafah.

Dozens of doctors from the U.S. and several other countries are trapped in Gaza amid Israel’s ongoing strikes on Rafah, the border city where more than 1 million Palestinians are sheltering. The international doctors faced a dire situation when they arrived in the war-torn Strip, finding patients with maggot-filled wounds, rampant infections, and children with horrible amputations. “You hear the news, but you cannot really recognize ... how bad until you come and see it,” Dr. Ammar Ghanem, an ICU specialist from Detroit with the Syrian American Medical Society, told the Associated Press. The volunteers were supposed to leave days ago, but they’re now fenced in and under assault by the Israeli military, who closed the main exit and entry points for humanitarian workers like the doctors on May 6 when the Rafah incursion began. The State Department said it’s working with Egypt and and Israel to get them out, but nothing has come of those negotiations so far.