Nurse from Canada who worked at Gaza hospital under siege describes difficult decision to leave

Looking for a moment's refuge inside the staff room at the overcrowded European Hospital near Rafah, Ahmed Kouta throws himself on a paltry mattress in the corner and props himself up on a pack of cotton balls. It's been a week since Kouta, a trained nurse, walked down the perilous Salah el Din road from Gaza's north to the south.

He stopped at the hospital to lend a hand where he could. The carnage inside the medical centre reminds him of the fighting he witnessed in the north, the sieges on Al-Shifa Hospital and how the war has affected the thousands of Palestinians struggling without meaningful access to food or water.

Kouta documented the hardship to his 400,000 followers on Instagram, where the Palestinian Canadian is known as Prince Kouta. 

"Everybody's life has changed," said Kouta, 23. "Everyone in Gaza has either lost their home, lost their family member, lost themselves, lost their life. Everybody has lost something in Gaza."

Kouta spoke to CBC News twice in the last week to chronicle his time in Gaza. Palestinian health officials say more than 34,000 people have died in the enclave since Israel launched its military offensive following the Hamas-led assault that Israel says left 1,200 people dead and saw more than 200 kidnapped.

On Sunday, Kouta finally crossed into Egypt from Gaza, en route to Canada to be reunited with family in London, Ont. His journey through the war-torn territory to Cairo is one account of an attempt to survive the intensity and suffering of the war.

The interviews with him have been edited and condensed for clarity.

I came to Gaza [from Canada] just to finish up my thesis [for a masters in health-care administration]. I was supposed to be here for at least a couple months and head back in February. However, the turnout has been completely different. And now we're stuck in a genocide. 

I made it to Gaza on the 11th of September. The morning of Oct. 7, I was supposed to be with the [Islamic University of Gaza] discussing with my professor the thesis that we had talked about and the proposal that I've already completed. Then the 7th of October came and the whole life just paused.

People in Gaza usually thought it would be only for a couple of days. Every aggression just escalates for a couple of days and then goes back to the normal state. However, this time it's been something completely different.

I was asleep the night before ... then the morning of, everybody in our area was freaked out. Everybody was thinking, 'Something is wrong, something wrong is going on.' And then when we went down in the streets and checked the news. We understood the situation that was happening. We, again, thought it was only going to be for a very small while until everything escalated. It escalated very quickly in a very different way.

Our daily routine, when you enter the hospital, you already know that you have a jammed day. The hospital would not stop from receiving any patients. The bombardments were always heard, even though we were inside the ER, and it's a place that bombardment shouldn't be heard. So while we're working and hearing all the bombardments, the strikes, the screaming, the crying, the bloodshed and the ER just in a situation of being very chaotic — inside of us, we had that very stressful feeling, but we had to hold ourselves to be able to continue.

You barely have any time to rest. You're up for over 24 hours. Sometimes your shift is extended. Sometimes you have to cover up for another colleague. You can't say no because you know that people here need you. You know that your colleague probably has somebody he lost.

That was the worst day that I lived in the whole 200 days being in Gaza. That day itself needs a whole documentary to talk about. I can't explain.