KHAN YOUNIS — A Palestinian surgeon who held Russian citizenship but refused to abandon his people, was martyred on Thursday when Israeli warplanes struck the intensive care unit and operating theatres of Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, in the southern Gaza Strip.
Dr. Rizq Ahmad Abu Shaeera, 52, head of the hospital’s General Surgery Department, was killed in the strike on the morning of November 12, just hours after completing surgeries on wounded patients. Six Palestinians were martyred in the attack — including patients and their accompanying relatives — and more than 20 others were injured.
Two missiles slammed into the hospital’s Yassin Building, one of them hitting the floors housing the ICU and operating rooms: the very wards where Dr. Abu Shaeera had spent the war saving lives.
A passport he never used
Dr. Abu Shaeera’s Russian citizenship could have secured his exit from the besieged territory at any point. He never used it.
According to colleagues, he did not miss a single day of duty throughout the war. For nearly three months during the siege of Nasser Medical Complex, he continued treating patients amid crippling shortages of medicine and equipment, in punishing conditions and under the constant threat of Israeli bombardment.
Those who worked beside him described a skilled, dedicated surgeon who never abandoned his patients, no matter how dire the circumstances.
1,724 healthcare workers martyred
The Palestinian Ministry of Health said Dr. Abu Shaeera’s death brought the number of healthcare workers killed in Gaza to 1,724 — a figure that lays bare the systematic destruction of the Strip’s medical sector.
Hospitals, medical personnel and the wounded are explicitly protected under international humanitarian law. Yet Nasser Medical Complex has endured siege and repeated strikes, with its surgeons operating through shortages and bombardment that would have emptied any other hospital on earth.
Dr. Abu Shaeera was offered a way out that most in Gaza can only dream of. He turned it down — and was martyred in the hospital where he had spent years saving others, at the post he refused to abandon, beside the patients he refused to leave.
Reference: ABNA24