Waterford surgeon returns from Gaza
Dr McGonagle was based in Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, Gaza.
A University Hospital Waterford doctor has returned from Palestine after performing humanitarian medical work in the besieged region of Gaza.
Dr Morgan McMonagle was on a six-week humanitarian mission at Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis. He was due to return back to Ireland earlier in March 2025, but with the ceasefire breaking between Israel and Palestine, he stayed on.
The breaking of the ceasefire has seen a quick resumption in Israeli military action against Palestine. In the few weeks since the ceasefire breach, thousands of civilians have been killed by Israeli missiles. Medical facilities, refugee camps and humanitarian shelters have been targeted.
The Nasser Hospital has been targeted multiple times by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF).
Dr McMonagle spoke about the last few weeks of his mission in Gaza, telling the Irish Times that they were "extremely busy".
He said: "Every night, there were more blasts, more shootings, more children brought in dead and more children brought in severely injured.
"Men were brought in, but the majority were probably children under 14 and women as well. It was everything from really bad chest injuries requiring their chest to be opened to hearts needing to be oversewn.”
He treated a four-month-old baby who had been hit in the belly by shrapnel. A large amount of patients were children, many of them now orphaned.
Dr McGonagle said: "I had an 18-month-old as well and when he came off the ventilator, he was crying for his mother and father and they were dead.”
He later told RTÉ: "I think anger is one of the big things because this is all manmade...It is purely 100% preventable. It is a political problem with a political solution."
