The Electronic Intifada 3 July 2025
A smoke plume rises following an Israeli air strike on a building in Gaza City, 30 June 2025.
APA imagesOn the morning of 30 June, around 10 am, I received a call from my longtime friend Osama Hamida.
He told me that his brother Ali had been badly injured in an Israeli attack on the Tuffah neighborhood of Gaza City and that he was on his way to see him at Al-Shifa Hospital.
Osama had received a phone call earlier that morning from a stranger, on his brother’s phone, telling him about the injury. Ali was conscious, but he had a head injury and needed treatment.
On 28 June, two days before, Israel had bombed the Tuffah neighborhood, killing at least 20 people. Ali had gone to the area two days later, on 30 June, to see if their home was still standing. That was when, standing on Jaffa Street, a home had been targeted by Israel, and a stone had flown at Ali’s head.
Osama asked for my help and to accompany him at the hospital. I told him I would be there soon.
I rushed to the hospital from our home in the al-Nasr neighborhood in western Gaza City and entered Al-Shifa’s grounds through the gate. Over a dozen corpses were on the ground in the hospital yard, covered with various pieces of cloth.
The reception area was full of injured people. Many people were missing limbs, and others were in pain and severely burned. Dust covered their faces and clothes. Nearly everyone was lying on the ground because there were no beds or chairs available.
I did not know it then, but I was witnessing the aftermath of a series of Israeli massacres on Gaza City and the north that would kill over 60 people in one day.
The situation would only worsen as the day went on.
Hospitals overwhelmed with patients
I found Osama standing over Ali, who was lying on the floor. Ali’s eyes were swollen, and his nose and mouth were bleeding. His nose looked broken. There was no doctor by his side.
Eventually, Ali was moved to a bed. I found a doctor and he told me that Ali would need a CT scan, and that that test is only available at Al Ahli Arab Hospital in eastern Gaza City. He put in a request for an ambulance to take Ali to the other hospital.
We weren’t allowed to ride with Ali in the ambulance, so Osama and I looked for a car to take us. Very few taxis are operating in Gaza, and most of the time they are full. But we eventually found a taxi and the driver dropped us off about 200 meters away. We got out of the car and started walking quickly.
Before we could reach the hospital, a man called out to us. He was warning us to not go any farther. He told us not to cross the road and that there was a structure that had been threatened with bombing.
We had to take another road.
Minutes passed, and a huge explosion shook the ground.
Every ten minutes we would hear another explosion.
Aftermath of al-Baqa cafe massacre
We arrived at Al Ahli Arab Hospital and had to wait. Ali was unable to stand, and a bed was provided for him. Many people were in need of CT scans that day, and there was only one machine.
Around 1 pm, it was Ali’s turn for his CT scan. The examination revealed that he had a skull fracture. The doctor told us that we had to go again to Al-Shifa Hospital.
We returned to Al-Shifa Hospital, and we showed the doctor the results of the CT scan.
Osama and I stood aside, watching the doctor treat his brother and clean his wounds. Ali’s nose was broken, and the doctor stabilized it with wooden splints.
Osama and I then went outside to the hospital yard, thinking that Osama would be staying the night there with him.
Then, suddenly, an ambulance drove very fast into the hospital yard and started dropping off injured people.
The scene turned terrifying.
A teenager in torn pants was being carried by another young man. He called out to me, saying, “Please, hold my foot!” But I didn’t know how to even help – the teen’s foot was dangling from his leg by a small piece of flesh.
I stood in shock, then a different ambulance brought in two injured young women, their clothing stained with blood.
The situation only got worse. Another ambulance arrived and carried the badly burned bodies of martyrs, all of them very young.
I couldn’t bear it and I cried out, asking, “What is happening?”
A stranger next to me told me that the Israeli military had bombed al-Baqa cafe. It was a place I knew, and a place where many of my friends went.
Donkey carts arrived carrying many more martyrs. Their bodies were charred black from the bombing. Then a tractor arrived, transporting even more of the deceased.
Seeing the wounded, it was clear they were university students. Cafes had become their only refuge, offering electricity and internet amid the harsh conditions in Gaza.
The hospital yard was so full of people that there was no space left for bodies, yet the ambulances came and went many more times, bringing more and more people.
Israel’s bombing killed more than 40 people at the cafe that day, and dozens more were killed and injured in other attacks on northern Gaza on 30 June.
I went to look at the martyrs. In these moments I fear I will know someone who has been killed.
I have been in this situation before, searching for the faces of loved ones among a field of martyrs. Yet among the deceased here, many were missing even their faces.
The smell of the hospital yard was of people’s burned bodies and blood. I couldn’t stand it.
More evacuation orders
We went inside the hospital to check on Ali.
A doctor told us that we must take him home, that he had done what he could and that they needed the space for the new arrivals.
The situation became even more difficult then.
Our phones were buzzing with notifications. The evacuation orders were coming in rapidly, with repeated calls to our phones playing recorded messages from the occupation army ordering us to go to the south.
It was as if the war had returned to its early days.
I am writing this article now from al-Nasr neighborhood in Gaza City, an area that is crowded with people displaced from the recent Israeli attacks. We did not evacuate south.
The feeling of loss is painful and the situation has become unbearable in Gaza.
Yousef Alnono is a writer from the Gaza Strip.
