Gaza doctor pleads: ‘Don’t wait until another massacre happens’

Dr. Mohammed Ghoneim pointing to dead bodies from the Al-Ahli Hospital attack. (Screenshot)
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Updated 20 October 2023
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Gaza doctor pleads: ‘Don’t wait until another massacre happens’

GAZA: A doctor at the Al-Shafaa Hospital in Gaza has implored the international community to stop the killing of innocent civilians in the enclave after a hospital was targeted on Tuesday evening. 

“This is really a genocide, according to international humanitarian law … The hospital is supposed to be a safe place. It’s supposed to be a shelter for displaced people,” Dr. Mohammed Ghoneim told Arab News as he was surrounded by dead bodies wrapped in white blankets and piled together.

“All of these casualties that came to the hospital … came as body parts, amputated without any signs of life,” he said.

Ghoneim pleaded: “We have only five main hospitals working now, and they will be out of service in the coming hours.

“Don’t wait until these hospitals become out of service … We are not feeling safe in this hospital now. We are not feeling safe in any place. Please stop this madness. Stop this genocide. Stop this humanitarian crisis.”

On Tuesday, an attack on Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza killed hundreds of patients and civilians who had been asked to shelter in the hospital. Israel and the US accuse the Palestinian armed group Islamic Jihad of carrying out the attack, which was the largest one-off attack since the start of the conflict.

As Biden touched down in Tel Aviv, he held a press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in which he claimed that the attack on the hospital was likely not caused by an airstrike by the Israeli military.

“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden said to Netanyahu, referring to Islamic Jihad.

The international community has condemned the attack, and a summit that was scheduled to be held in Amman between US President Joe Biden and leaders from Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinian Authority has been canceled following the massacre.


Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe

Updated 24 January 2026
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Take back and prosecute your jailed Daesh militants, Iraq tells Europe

RAQQA: Baghdad on Friday urged European states to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who fought for Daesh, and who are now being moved to Iraq from detention camps in Syria.

Europeans were among 150 Daesh prisoners transferred so far by the US military from Kurdish custody in Syria. They were among an estimated 7,000 militants due to be moved across the border to Iraq as the Kurdish-led force that has held them for years relinquishes swaths of territory to the advancing Syrian army.
In a telephone call on Friday with French President Emmanuel Macron, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani said European countries should take back and prosecute their nationals.
An Iraqi security official said the 150 so far transferred to Iraq were “all leaders of the Daesh group, and some of the most notorious criminals.” They included “Europeans, Asians, Arabs and Iraqis,” he said.
Another Iraqi security source said the group comprised “85 Iraqis and 65 others of various nationalities, including Europeans, Sudanese, Somalis, and people from the Caucasus region.”
They all took part in Daesh operations in Iraq, he said, and were now being held at a prison in Baghdad.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that “non-Iraqi terrorists will be in Iraq temporarily.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces jailed thousands of militant fighters and detained tens of thousands of their relatives in camps as it pushed out Daesh in 2019 after five years of fighting.