What happened
Newly released security footage from an Israeli hospital shows the chaos and heroism that unfolded on October 7, 2023, after a Hamas attack. The footage, from Soroka Medical Center, captures the moment when hundreds of wounded soldiers and civilians arrived at the hospital, which was quickly overwhelmed.
The hospital, the only Level 1 trauma center in southern Israel, treated 674 wounded in the first 24 hours after the attack, more than five times the number of casualties from the largest mass-casualty incident it had previously faced. Hospital staff had to scramble to treat patients, who included babies, elderly Israelis, and young revelers shot at the Nova music festival.
Prof. Shlomi Codish, CEO of Clalit-Soroka Medical Center, described the scene as 'evil beyond what you can comprehend'. He recalled the hospital's first operation, which was on a Bedouin Muslim woman who was more than 40 weeks pregnant and had been shot in the abdomen. Doctors saved the woman, but her baby died 14 hours later.
The hospital's emergency protocols kicked in immediately after the attack, with staff ordering 100 additional units of blood and summoning over 1,000 staffers. However, the hospital was still unprepared for the scale of the attack, and staff had to convert internal medicine wards into surgical wards and open spaces into intensive-care areas.
The previously unreleased hospital surveillance footage was broadcast in a documentary on Israel's public broadcaster, KAN 11, which shows the medical center as the magnitude of the attack gradually became apparent. The documentary includes scenes of frantic relatives searching for loved ones, and hospital staff trying to identify anonymous patients.
