Gaza Rescuers Are Haunted by Voices of Those They Couldn’t Save

When he sleeps, Nooh al-Shaghnobi, a rescue worker in Gaza, is haunted by the cries of those he could not save.

The memories of the past 14 months come flooding back, nightmares of collapsed buildings with no equipment to dig out survivors.

“We hear the voices of the people under the rubble,” he said in an interview between rescue calls. “Imagine there are people under the rubble who we know are alive, but we can’t save them. We have to leave them to die.”

For more than a year now, Gaza’s rescue workers, paramedics and ambulance drivers have toiled on the front lines of the war, racing to the sites of countless Israeli airstrikes to try to save those who survived and recover the bodies of those who did not. In the war’s first seven weeks alone, Israel fired nearly 30,000 munitions into Gaza, unleashing one of the most intense bombing campaigns in contemporary warfare.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has said that Gaza rescuers face dangerous conditions without sufficient equipment, vehicles or fuel. They are mostly left to dig out survivors from under tons of broken stone, concrete and twisted metal with their hands and rudimentary tools.

The carnage has taken a heavy physical, mental and emotional toll on rescuers, and Israeli strikes have killed at least 118 of them during the conflict, according to local rescue officials.

“First responders suffer from unspeakable levels of stress, anxiety and frustration,” said Hisham Mhanna, a Red Cross spokesman in Gaza. “We have heard them describe feelings of helplessness toward the victims who they could not save, and of the immense pain of losing colleagues on duty.”

From the war’s onset — which began after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel — rescue workers were struggling to keep up with the pace of airstrikes. In the first year of the war, the Israeli military said it struck more than 40,000 targets across an area the size of Detroit with approximately 60,000 bombs and other munitions.

This war has been like no other that Gazans have lived through, with no safe place to shelter and no target off limits, residents and aid officials say. The Israeli military has said it takes “feasible precautions to mitigate civilian harm.”

Despite the trauma, Mr. al-Shaghnobi, 23, said he was compelled to persist with his rescue work with the Gaza Civil Defense, an emergency services agency, knowing that he could save at least some lives.

He said he regularly shared videos and images on social media to draw attention to the suffering in Gaza.

In one video posted in October in the Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, he calls out to a young boy whose muffled screams can be heard from under rubble.

“Don’t be scared,” Mr. al-Shagnobi yells, issuing a stream of rapid-fire instructions: “Rashid, don’t tire yourself out. Don’t talk. Don’t lose consciousness.”

Illuminated by a head lamp, the rescuer crawls in between collapsed floors to reach Rashid’s partly exposed head, the rest of him buried in crushed cement and stone. After three hours, Rashid is pulled alive from the rubble.

“Every day is harder than the day before,” Mr. al-Shaghnobi said. “My soul is tired from this war.”

The Red Cross, which has provided masks, boots, protective uniforms and body bags to rescuers, has also offered limited mental health counseling. But given the extreme trauma of the situation, the sessions have not been enough, said Mr. Mhanna, the Red Cross spokesman.

Amir Ahmed, a paramedic, said that a few months ago, his nightmares had become too much for him and he quit his work with the Palestine Red Crescent rescue service.

“You reach a point where you can no longer continue with this,” he said recently.

Mr. Ahmed said he had worked in antiquity preservation before the war, and also volunteered with the Red Crescent during Gaza’s many conflicts because he was trained as an emergency medical technician. He said he was called to duty on the second day of the war.

As the conflict dragged on, he said, he found himself falling deeper into depression. At home with his wife and three children, he grew increasingly tense and angry.

Some days, he tried to avoid talking to anyone and wanted to spend all of his time sleeping, even when they were displaced in tents or crowded into one-room apartments.

“I would dream of the people who were in pieces that I picked up with my own hands,” he said, lowering his voice.

The smell of blood lingered on his hands for days after one rescue and recovery, he said, adding that there had been almost no psychological support or mental health help.

Although he feels guilty about quitting his work as a rescuer, he said he did not regret his decision.

Some rescue workers accuse Israel of targeting them, an accusation that the Red Crescent and the Gaza Civil Defense have echoed.

The Israeli military said it had never targeted rescue workers, and would never do so deliberately. “The Israel Defense Forces also recognize the importance of the special protections given to medical teams under international humanitarian law and takes action to prevent harm to them,” a military statement said.

They lost contact with Red Crescent dispatchers soon after arriving at the scene and nearly two weeks later were found dead in their burned ambulance. Hind, too, was found dead inside her family’s vehicle.

The Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of bombing the ambulance as it arrived “despite prior coordination” between the organization and the Israeli military. The Israeli military did not comment on the attack despite repeated requests.

Early on in the war, Mr. al-Shaghnobi said, he and his fellow rescuers would bid one another farewell each night, unsure how much longer they would survive the Israeli onslaught.

In November 2023, he said, he was with his crewmates at the scene of a seven-story building that had been felled by an Israeli airstrike days earlier, trying to retrieve the bodies of a family.

As the rescuers combed through the rubble, another Israeli airstrike hit, killing two rescue workers and the two surviving family members, according to accounts from relatives at the time and Mr. al-Shaghnobi.

He captured the immediate aftermath of the strike on video.

“Why is this happening to those of us who just rescue people?” he said more recently. “We have nothing to do with the weapons or the resistance. All our work is humanitarian work. Why are the Israelis targeting us?”

Naseem Hassan, a paramedic and ambulance driver, said that his brother was killed nearly a year ago at Al Amal Hospital while working with the Red Crescent. He died in an airstrike after going up to the hospital’s roof to turn on a generator, the surviving brother said. The Israeli military said it was “not aware of the incident.”

Mr. Hassan, 47, said he had been worn down by the strain and exhaustion of rescuing the war’s wounded.

When the conflict began, he said, he weighed 190 pounds. Now, after living mostly off canned food and bug-infested bread and enduring physically draining days spent digging through rubble, he is down to about 150 pounds.

“Mentally, we are patient and resolute, because we have to be,” he said. “If we were to have a nervous breakdown, who else is going to rescue people? Who is going to recover the bodies? Who is going to bury them?”

Patrick Kingsley contributed reporting.