AL-ARISH, Egypt — About 1,000 people from Gaza have been treated in a French field hospital aboard a ship off the coast of Egypt, its captain said, providing care for some as health infrastructure in the war-devastated enclave is near collapse.
The Dixmude, a French helicopter carrier, has been docked in the Egyptian port of al-Arish, 50 km (30 miles) west of the Gaza Strip, since November. The vessel is equipped with wards, operating theaters and 70 medical staff.
Nearly 120 injured people have been hospitalized on board, while hundreds more have been seen for outpatient consultations, including follow-ups on injuries and psychiatric issues, said Captain Alexandre Blonce, calling it an “unprecedented mission.”
Israel launched all-out war to eliminate Gaza’s ruling Palestinian Islamist terror group Hamas after thousands of terrorists burst across the border into southern Israeli communities and bases on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking 253 hostages to the enclave.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza has said the war has killed over 25,000 people. The figure cannot be independently verified, and is believed to include both civilians and Hamas members killed in Gaza, including as a consequence of terror groups’ own rocket misfires. The IDF says it has killed over 9,000 operatives in Gaza, in addition to some 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on and immediately after October 7.
Gazans have struggled to get medical care at home as tens of thousands have been wounded, with most of Gaza’s 36 hospitals no longer functioning, and those remaining operating at far over capacity, the World Health Organization says.
Those lucky enough to cross into Egypt, like 16-year-old Ahmed Abu Daqqa, who was injured on Nov. 1, faced long waits for medical care.
Doctors in Gaza “took out the shrapnel and put in two rods, but a month later they discovered more shrapnel in my knee. They told me they’ll handle it later because there were too many surgeries,” he said on board the Dixmude.
“I tried many times to get a transfer” before finally crossing into Egypt, he said.
He was then able to undergo further surgery where the rods and shrapnel were removed and a resulting infection dealt with, as well as receiving physical therapy.
He and others on board the French ship were awaiting further transfers to hospitals in Egypt or abroad.
Italy sent a similar floating hospital to the Egyptian coast in December.
In the hull of the vessel, a handful of patients and their families gathered around a table, listlessly playing a card game.
Among them was Nesma Abu Gayad, a bright-eyed Palestinian who was seriously injured when her home was shelled.
“I was treated at a few hospitals in Gaza, before arriving in Egypt,” she told AFP, the stump of her right foot floating above the ground from her wheelchair.
“The next step will be a prosthetic, but I have to get a referral and travel to get it abroad.”
French doctor Marine, who is serving aboard the Dixmude and only gave her first name, said the warship has so far received 120 patients, all serious cases who needed long periods of hospitalization.
That is just a tiny minority of the more than 62,000 people who have been injured in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Another French doctor on the Dixmude, Salle, said she was shocked by the injuries that she had come across.
“I’m in the military, so I deal with the war wounds of our French and allied servicemen,” she said. “But what shocked me was to find them on civilians.”