'Bombs just started to rain down': Saskatoon nurse recounts working in Gaza when Israel broke ceasefire
CBC
After working two stints in Gaza, a Saskatoon nurse says she feels a "ton of guilt" watching news emerging from the region now that she's back in Canada.
"I miss the people that I work with every single day," Casey Eberl said. "They're always in my mind. Always."
Eberl remembers the scene in Gaza when Israel broke a fragile ceasefire by launching heavy airstrikes in March.
"It was unlike anything any of us could have expected. We were sleeping," Eberl said.
"The bombs just started to rain down and we all hibernated that night and our clinics had mass casualty incidents. The hospital I was working at had mass casualty incidents and it only got worse from there."
The airstrikes broke a two-month ceasefire with Hamas, as Israel vowed to use force to free its remaining hostages in the territory. The strikes killed more than 400 people, according to Palestinian health authorities, and haven't stopped since.
The decades-long conflict escalated on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants attacked Israel, killing around 1,200 people. In response, Israel launched a military campaign that has devastated much of Gaza.
Israel's military campaign, which its leaders have said is aimed at uprooting Hamas and securing the release of the hostages, has killed more than 53,000 people and displaced practically all of Gaza's more than two million Palestinians in nearly 20 months of war, according to Gaza's health ministry. Most of the people Israel has killed are civilians, including more than 16,500 children under the age of 18, the ministry says.
Eberl was serving in Nasser Hospital in southern Gaza, which Israel has now struck multiple times.
An airstrike at the hospital killed five people on March 23, including a Hamas political leader and Palestinian medics, Hamas said. On May 13, airstrikes at Nasser and another hospital killed 18 people.
Eberl said she was treating patients at Nasser Hospital for two months ending in April. She was also there for a six-week period last fall. She said hearing from her Palestinian colleagues motivated her to go back.
"I'm extremely lucky that I got to see them again. Especially with the war going on, you never know if the people that you love, the people that you worked with and cared for, might be there again if you get to go back," Eberl said on CBC's The 306 radio show with host Peter Mills.
Eberl said she saw a spike in the number of patients with blast injuries, infectious diseases and malnutrition because of a lack of access to clean water. She said she has never experienced a conflict like this before, and was looking to her Palestinian colleagues for how to navigate the situation.
"There's no textbook or manual for something like that. And so I really looked to the Palestinian staff and to be honest, they led me. They told me what they needed, how I could support them, and I just tried to do my best to listen to their needs," she said. "They were the boss. They were the guides."
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