4 months later, doctors remove bullets from Palestinian woman’s head

Cairo – Sarah al-Awady Gaza Strip The displaced Palestinian was sheltered when she was hit by a bullet fired by an Israeli quad bike drone.

“Suddenly, my mind felt a pain, like I was hit by an iron rod or something,” the 18-year-old Gazan told CBS News this week. “My family started screaming, ‘Bullets, bullets!’ Everyone was panicking, they held me and drove me to Shuhada Alexa Hospital.”

CBS News has asked the IDF about its reported use of small-armed drones in Gaza and claims about Al Albuadidi, especially as she was hit by a weapon in a displaced civilian camp. “Abide by international law, target only military targets and take actionable precautions to mitigate civilian harm,” the IDF said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

The military said it could not provide detailed information about the various aircraft it used, “because they are classified for safety reasons and avoid damaging the operational capabilities of the IDF”, adding that it could not provide information about Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-Al-All-All-Able without more precise information on the shooting time and location.

Doctors use them in The destruction of GazaMore than a year after Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023 sparked a war in the Palestinian territory. They could see that the bullet was placed on the Al-Awady skull behind the right eye, but they had no ability to remove it.

Eventually, Al-Awady was told that the Gaza doctors could do more, but she refused to give up hope and insisted on staying in the hospital. She believes that at least in the hospital, her seriously injured eyes will be protected by dusty conditions in the family’s temporary home.

So she still relies on painkillers to deal with the painful pain on her head, but there is no plan for relief.

In early November, a volunteer medical staff saw Al-Awady and visited a European hospital near Khan Younis in southern Gaza. Dr. Mohamed Tawfik, an Egyptian, was among the volunteers and when he met Al-Abady, he thought of someone he believed could help.

Tawfik called his father, a veteran ophthalmologist, for medical advice.

Ahmed Tawfik, an older doctor, told CBS News that he wanted to go to Gaza to try to help the young woman, but the southern border of Rafale’s southern border between the enclave and Egypt has been closed.

“I follow this case almost every day. I think this is my case,” Tofik said.

But he couldn’t find a way to travel to Gaza, when war was still raging and Israel allowed few people to leave the enclave, even for medical treatment.

The doctor’s son returns to Egypt, Al-Awady tells CBS News that she is beginning to give up hope. For months, she said she had been worried that she would permanently ignore her right eye.

“I applied for treatment abroad like many others. When people asked me, ‘How long have you been waiting?’ I would say a month.

After the bullet was placed on Alvadi’s head for about three months, there was finally a glimmer of hope, and it was news from Israel and Hamas Agree to the ceasefire trade. It came into effect on January 19, 2024, and Al-Awady was able to return to her destroyed home in northern Gaza.

She said it was reassuring to find a family home in a devastating few buildings. She stayed there for a week until the evening of February 8 when she received a call from the World Health Organization telling her that she would leave Egypt the next day.

“There was no electricity, so I packed my luggage with candlelight.” Only her mother was allowed to travel with her, but the next day as planned, the two arrived in Egypt.

She was first sent to the city of SAS on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt. A week later, Dr. Tawfik managed to move her to the hospital he worked in Al-Sharqia Province in the Nile Delta.

Three teams – Ophthalmology, Neurosurgery and Radiology – worked together to debate the best way to remove Al-Awady’s optic nerve next to several months.

“We did several simulations to find the best way to avoid the optic nerve,” Dr. Mohamed Khaled Shawky of the Al Nour Center for Radiology told CBS News, who directed the surgery remotely through video links from his workstation at a separate facility.

“The bullet lands where the patient is most likely, but it’s the worst place for the medical team,” Shawky told CBS News. “If it moves in any direction, it will cause huge damage.”

The doctor agreed that the best option was to try to enter the bullet through Al-Awady’s eye sockets to avoid damaging her brain.

Tawfik is straightforward, telling Al-Abady that there is a 50% chance of success, the risk of internal bleeding, that she may lose her eyes altogether, or cause her own vision to be seriously damaged.

“I cried. I was scared, but I prayed and accepted the risk.”

Al-Awady

The surgery was performed last week and it was successful. Tawfik told CBS News that he was surprised by the infection and abscess caused by the bullet, which rusted on Al-Al-Abady’s head over time.

Even with bullets, Al-Awady didn’t completely get out of the woods.

“Three hours later, I opened my eyes and they told me, thank God, everything went well.” “I started crying again.”

“She’s very stable now and she’s taking medication and getting better and better,” Tawfik told CBS News. “My goal is to end the pain caused by the infection first, and then to retain her current vision level. I hope her vision will improve after dealing with the retina separation.”

The young woman’s eyes will never look or see like before she was shot.

Like many Palestinians who get medical help from the Gaza Strip, Al-Awady told CBS News that her joy is not complete. She missed the rest of her family and she had to stay.

When asked about the rusty bullet that had lived in her mind for four months, she said she planned to stick with it.

“I’m thinking about framing it,” she told CBS News.