During The Times’ visit to Al Aqsa, doctors were seen pushing through crowds of panicked people to try to reach operating rooms, delayed by the mass of people. Amid the confusion, Ms. Huster said, doctors sometimes rushed fatally injured people into operating rooms, wasting vital time for those who still had a chance of survival.
Ms. Huster said most of the people she had treated in recent days were women and children.
Early Thursday afternoon, after burying a friend he had pulled from the rubble of the school complex, Mr. Abu Ammar once again found himself in hospital.
This time he was accompanied by his friend’s brother, who he was trying to cram into a corridor near the entrance. The brother’s face was cut by shrapnel and he had a deep gash in his right leg.
But he wasn’t the only one desperate for help.
All around them were injured people, some lying on the floor covered in blood, others on beds screaming for help. A man whose face was blackened by burns and dust from the explosion that morning begged two relatives who were with him to fan his face with a piece of cardboard, which they waved at him.
