One of the at least 20 doctors trapped in Gaza on medical missions saved Democratic Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth life in the Iraq War, according to a report.
Adam Hamawy, of New Jersey, is one of the over 20 doctors that the U.S. Department of State was working with the United Nations (UN) and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to rescue from Gaza, The Intercept reported Monday. The doctors reportedly are in Gaza on medical missions at the Gaza European Hospital in Rafah.
Israel’s blockage of aid through the Rafah border with Egypt has led to severe dehydration among both the Palestinians and the doctors. The doctors are rationing water and one of them is in poor health, battling dehydration using an intravenous drip, according to The Intercept.
The doctors had traveled to Gaza earlier this month as part of the Palestinian American Medical Association but could not leave Rafah because the city’s border crossing to Egypt was closed, NBC News reported. (RELATED: Israel Expands Evacuation Order In Rafah)
State Dept response https://t.co/tTz37ILQ9p
— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) May 13, 2024
Hamawy was an Army veteran serving in Iraq as a plastic surgeon when the then-veteran Duckworth’s Black Hawk helicopter took enemy flak and crashed during the Second Gulf War in Iraq, according to The Intercept.
Duckworth suffered extensive injuries and became the first American double amputee of the war, according to the Chicago Magazine.
“One of the surgeons who helped save my life, Adam Hamawy, described my leg injuries to me years later as ‘mud and blood, that’s all there was’,” Duckworth recalled in a passage from her 2021 memoir, Every Day Is a Gift, in the Chicago Magazine.
“I’m in direct contact with Dr. Hamawy and am working hard to secure his group’s immediate evacuation,” Duckworth posted on X (formerly Twitter) Tuesday. “Aid workers and innocent civilians should always be protected. The Netanyahu admin must work to open the Rafah crossing, support evacuations and allow much more aid in.”
Hamawy has also volunteered his medical expertise for the benefit of Haitians and Syrians during their countries’ upheavals, he told Anadolu Agency.
The IDF pushed deeper into Rafah Tuesday, as nearly 450,000 fled at Israel’s behest in what is one of the largest internal displacements of the seven-month Israel-Hamas war, the Washington Post reported.
