Khalid Khalifa waved his right hand as he recalled the Israeli planes that darkened the skies over Gaza City on November 15, 2023. He pointed to his eye and then to something invisible above his head. His left arm, having been amputated, was bandaged. "The Israelis saw from the sky that there were children and women among us. They dropped their bombs anyway," said this 41-year-old Palestinian man, whom we met on the Dixmude on December 31.

Since later November 2023, this French amphibious helicopter carrier (PHA) – partially converted into a hospital – has been anchored in the Egyptian port of el-Arish, off the coast of Gaza, to help the Palestinian enclave's wounded. The French Navy vessel currently has 40 beds, two operating theaters, a major burns treatment room, medical scanners and analysis laboratories. Nearly 70 civilian and military medical personnel are on board. Khalifa was one of the 88 patients to have been treated by the Dixmude since the start of its mission.

Sitting on a chair in the ship's light hospitalization area, this fruit and vegetable salesman recalled the 48 hours he had spent under the rubble waiting for his neighbors to find him. Khalifa saw the Israeli tanks arrive. "I was surrounded by the dead. My neighbors dug me up in secret so that the Israelis wouldn't see me. Otherwise they would have carted me off with them," explained this man, with a salt-and-pepper beard and hair.

Seriously wounded, he didn't go to hospital because of the intense bombings. "What's more, there was no ambulance," he said. As his left arm began to turn black and became infected, he decided to go to Al-Aqsa Hospital, "in a horse-drawn carriage," he explained. "My bones were showing. The doctors at the hospital told me that my arm could have been saved, but that it was too late." His arm was amputated.

The medical team put him on the list for evacuation to Egypt. He arrived on the Dixmude in mid-December, leaving behind his daughter and wife in southern Gaza, near the Rafah crossing with Egypt. "I was able to call them this morning on the hospital phone," he said. "They're fine, thank God!"

According to French Armed Forces Minister Sébastien Lecornu – on an official visit to the Dixmude on New Year's Eve – the majority of the wounded being cared for on the helicopter carrier have already received some treatment in the Gaza Strip, where the health system has nonetheless been severely impacted by the war and medical resources have become extremely rudimentary. "They [the wounded] present particularly serious complications," explained the minister on board, who emphasized the "close partnership" with Egypt, without which the operation would not have been possible.

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