When Dr. Nil Ekiz set foot in Gaza, she thought she was prepared for the worst. But what she encountered was something no training or experience could have prepared her for, a reality she described as far beyond the imagination of even the most graphic horror films. Streets once alive with laughter and movement had turned into endless trails of rubble, while the air was filled with cries of hunger and grief.

At Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunis, where she worked for weeks alongside a small Norwegian team, Ekiz witnessed unimaginable suffering. The hospital, built to accommodate a few hundred patients, was suffocating under the weight of nearly triple that number. People lay on cold floors, in corridors, on staircases, their bodies broken by bombs and bullets, or weakened by untreated illnesses. Medicines had vanished, anaesthetics were a rarity, and painkillers were nearly impossible to find. Patients screamed through surgeries, while doctors stitched wounds with trembling hands and fading strength.

Among the many stories that scarred her memory were those of children, toddlers and teenagers alike, whose bodies bore the marks of the genocide. Many were struck while queuing for food, and others arrived from tents where hunger and infection were slowly consuming them. In intensive care, she saw faces far too young to carry such pain. She spoke of colleagues who injected themselves with saline just to stay upright, who worked without food, sleep, or hope, after losing everything, yet continued out of sheer humanity.

As she prepared to leave, Ekiz made a quiet promise: she would return. Not just to heal, but to testify. “The world must know what we saw,” she said. “Because silence, too, can be a form of complicity.”