Located some 25 miles from the Gaza Strip, Soroka Medical Center is where the wounded were sent after the Hamas terrorist attacks on Southern Israel this past weekend.
“The extent of the injuries to civilians, children, the elderly was unprecedented,” Dr. Shlomi Codish, CEO of Soroka, told The Post. “In the first 18 hours, we saw 700 people and treated them under fire — literally. Bombs were falling around us and air raid sirens were going off.”
Working 36-hour shifts, the staff has seen the unimaginable.
“What human being shoots young women in their beds, in their sleep?” asked Codish. “We had a patient come in, wearing her pajamas after being shot in bed. What are they protecting against?
“A pregnant woman came in after being shot in her abdomen,” recalled Codish. “She survived but the baby did not — killed in a terror attack before being born.”
Incoming was so intense that medical treatments were administered wherever possible.
“We performed surgery in the emergency department because patients did not have time to make it to the operating theater,” he said. “Out of 700, 18 died.”
Adding to the stress was the fact that doctors themselves had to leave behind family members — “In the Negev, which was the hot-zone of the terrorist attack,” Codish said — knowing that they could be murdered or kidnapped by Hamas terrorists.
“The whole time we were cognizant of staff members who had been killed or who were missing,” he added.
Codish and his crew are seasoned at dealing with combat injuries, but these were something else altogether.
“In a military event, soldiers wear protective equipment,” Codish said. “A gunshot when you are protected causes significant damage, but not significant injuries. For young civilians, shot while enjoying a party, that is not the case.”
Helicopters rushed some of the critically injured to Soroka, while others arrived via ambulance — or however they could. “People shot in the settlements where EMS could not reach hiked to the highway and got picked up by passing motorists,” said Codish. “People … walked for miles with gunshot wounds and distanced themselves from terrorists with assault rifles.”
A police officer, shot in both legs in the city of Ofaquim, “struggled to the road where he met up with an ambulance. He’s lucky to be alive.”
Codish and his crew know the casualties will continue to roll in. “We flew out the first 700 to create space for the next wave,” said the doctor. “They went out in fleets of helicopters, headed to hospitals further away from Gaza. We need to make room.”