When the first gunshot wounds arrived at his hospital in Nablus on Wednesday, during a bloody Israeli incursion, Elias al-Ashqar rushed to treat them. But the nurse failed to save one of them: his father.
“I was in the hospital at the usual time on Wednesday morning, training medical students,” Elias al-Ashqar, 25, told AFP.
The young nurse is then interrupted by the alarm of the An-Najah hospital which goes off to warn the teams of the massive arrival of wounded.
Shortly before, Israeli forces launched an incursion into the old city of Nablus, searching, according to the army, for suspects involved in past or future anti-Israeli attacks.
The army has multiplied for almost a year its operations in this northern sector of the West Bank – Palestinian territory occupied by Israel since 1967 – stronghold of Palestinian armed groups.
According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, 11 Palestinians died and more than 80 were wounded by bullets during this raid, the deadliest since 2005 in the West Bank.
When the first injured arrived, distributed in several establishments in the city, Elias al-Ashqar rushed to his emergency department where “chaos” then reigned.
“There was a lot of blood and clothes on the floor,” he said. In the room, the doctors tried to resuscitate two men, on beds arranged one in front of the other.
“I helped the doctors with the first injured man, who was young, but he quickly succumbed,” he said. “So I tried to help the second one, without looking at his face.”
Then, gone to lend a hand to other colleagues, Elias al-Ashqar is seized with a “strange feeling”.
“I ran back there and asked regarding (the second man). When I was told he had died a martyr, I instinctively pulled back the curtain and discovered it was of my father”.
“‘This is my father!’ ‘This is my father!’ I shouted,” recalls the nurse, with tears in his eyes, during a ceremony on Friday in tribute to Abdelaziz al-Ashqar, 65.
As young men flock to offer their condolences, Elias al-Ashqar only wants justice for his father, who was unarmed and returning from the mosque when he was hit by Israeli gunfire, says he told AFP.
