Dr. Feroz Sidhwa, an American trauma surgeon volunteering in southern Gaza, told the American website Antiwar.com what he witnessed Tuesday morning when Israel resumed its intense bombing campaign on the besieged enclave, killing more than 400 Palestinians, including more than 180 children and hundreds of women.

Sidhwa said he and the medical team at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis performed surgeries "almost exclusively on women and children."

He added to the website that the first patient he found was a three- or four-year-old girl "suffering from shortness of breath, a weak pulse, and multiple shrapnel wounds to her head and face," and that he had to tell her father that she would not survive.

Dr. Sidhwa says in his statement: “On the morning of March 18, 2025, I was volunteering at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. At around 2:30 a.m., Israel began bombing Gaza again, as usual, under false pretexts. This appears to have been coordinated in advance with the White House, revealing the extent of our government’s complicity in these crimes. I woke up startled when our bedroom door opened and I was stunned into the closet behind it.”

He describes what he did: “I headed to the emergency room to help with the mass casualty situation we knew would follow. The Palestinian surgeon and the nurse team leader who led the mass casualty efforts did a great job controlling the situation and triaging patients. I went to the red triage area with Dr. Morgan McMonagle, an Irish trauma and vascular surgeon. The first patient I found was a 3-4-year-old girl with respiratory distress, a weak pulse, and multiple shrapnel wounds to her head and face. I told her father she was going to die, and there was nothing we could do about it… Next, Morgan was assessing a six-year-old boy with shrapnel wounds to his chest, abdomen, and left leg. He underwent an exploratory abdominal exam, which fortunately revealed no major abdominal bleeding. We found his popliteal artery was severed, and fortunately, Dr. McMonagle was able to essentially repair it.”

Dr. Sidhwa continues, "I then proceeded to perform an exploratory abdominal exam on a 29-year-old woman, whom I later discovered was the sister of one of the doctors I work with here. Her sacrum, the bone in the pelvis that connects the pelvis to the spine, had a tennis ball-sized hole in it, as did the skin and muscles of her lower back, causing massive bleeding. Her rectum was torn in half, and her vagina and bladder were both injured. We were able to successfully move her from the operating room to the intensive care unit, but she died within the next 12 hours."

"Then we treated a six-year-old child who had two pieces of shrapnel in his right ventricle, causing a cardiac effusion. His heart stopped on the way to the operating room. Dr. McMonagle opened his chest, repaired his heart, and was able to restart it. We then examined the child's abdomen and found a severe injury to the right side of his liver, three perforations in his stomach, two perforations in his colon, and five perforations in his small intestine. He was without a doubt the most severely injured child I have ever seen, and he was not dead yet. We were able to get him out of the operating room and into the intensive care unit, but he also died 12 hours later."

"The night continued in this vein: We operated almost exclusively on women and children, and we had no indication that these few wounded men were combatants," Dr. Sidhwa added in his statement.

Sidhwa concludes his statement by emphasizing, “The Americans must immediately cease providing the critical military, diplomatic, and economic support that makes these crimes possible. Hamas has already agreed to a three-phase ceasefire that includes the return of all Israeli captives, and by all accounts, Hamas has adhered to the agreement. Anyone who reads the Israeli press knows that Israel’s plan from the outset was never to enter the second phase of the ceasefire agreement, just as Israel has failed to adhere to every ceasefire signed with Hamas since 2004. The United States is the guarantor of the January 19 ceasefire agreement, and therefore our assistance in helping Israel violate it is doubly illegal. I hope people will do everything they can at this crucial moment.”

It is noteworthy that Sky News interviewed Dr. Sidhwa about the massive and disastrous Israeli bombing.

Sidhwa previously volunteered in Gaza in March and April of 2024 and helped draw attention to the crimes against Palestinian children that he and other American healthcare workers witnessed.

In October 2024, Sidhwa and 98 other American healthcare workers sent an open letter to then-President Joe Biden urging him to end military aid to Israel. The letter stated that every healthcare worker "worked in an emergency room, intensive care unit, or surgery and treated children under the age of 18 who had been shot in the head or chest on a regular or even daily basis."