Civilians in Gaza have sustained injuries of a type and on a scale more usually seen among professional soldiers involved in intense combat operations.
Research published in the British Medical Journal – based on the type of injuries observed by international healthcare workers during the conflict in Gaza – found that wounds such as burns or leg injuries are more common in Gaza than among US soldiers who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Injured civilians in Gaza are experiencing a pattern of wounds that you would expect in intense combat with military professionals. The distribution and nature [of injuries] is almost the same or worse,” Bilal Irfan, one of the study’s authors, told The Guardian.
Irfan said the data did not include most fatal injuries. “This is data for the patients who made it to hospital and so survived. We don’t even have a full profile of the serious injuries of those who died without any medical attention,” he said.
Overall, almost 24,000 trauma-related injuries were reported in the study, of which 18 per cent were burns. About two-thirds of injuries were from explosions.
Burns were particularly common and severe, in particular among children, the authors found. More than 10 per cent of burn injuries were fourth degree, meaning they penetrated all tissue layers down to the bone.
The extent of traumatic injury victims reflects “the impact of indiscriminate aerial and heavy explosive bombardment in civilian areas”, the study said.