Mariam Abu Dagga: Inside the Israeli hospital strike that killed her – and the possible war crimes behind it

Become an Independent member to bookmark this article Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Membership today. Join today Already a member? Log in On The Ground newsletter: Get a weekly dispatch from our international correspondents Get a weekly dispatch from our international correspondents Get a weekly international news dispatch Email * SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice 9.30am, 25 August 2025 Against the deadly drumbeat of Israeli tank fire, Mariam Abu Dagga is eking out the last of her precious coffee supplies with close friend, flatmate and journalist Baraa Lafi. It's another Monday in this relentless slaughter. The 33-year-old journalist, who works for Independent Arabia and the Associated Press , is sitting in the partially destroyed building she shares with other female reporters in Khan Younis, south Gaza. Israeli military bulldozers had, at some point earlier in this war, punched through the side of the wall, which the owners had patched up with rubble, cement and rocks. And so the room is "crushed and deformed", Baraa says. But it is home - for now. Together the two women, who bonded over their passion for work, are discussing their latest joint report about overcrowding in Nasser Hospital, located just across the street. They had interviewed their friend, Canadian-Palestinian emergency nurse and international volunteer Amanda, whose surname is coincidentally Nasser. They are interrupted by Baraa's mother calling to check on them. They reassure her they are both fine. Truthfully, Mariam hasn't been good for weeks. She deeply misses her only child: 14-year-old Ghaith she had managed to send out of Gaza to the UAE last year. She is still grieving the loss of her mother, who in the middle of the bombing in May 2024 died of cancer, in part due to a lack of treatment. Her father, to whom she had donated one of her kidneys before the war, wasn’t doing well either. The family had, like so many in Gaza, lost their home in Khan Younis, been forcibly displaced multiple times and survived starvation. Surrounded by death, she had secretly left a will for her son with Baraa. Three days earlier, she had also sent a voice note to Hadi Torfi, her editor at Independent Arabia , warning that she might be forced to flee for the fourth time. The staff at Nasser Hospital had told journalists, following a well-worn pattern of Israel striking, encircling and laying siege to hospitals, that Nasser and the surrounding area would be next. "I hope you are still tracking me, right?" she says in the voicenote, breaking off into deep, chest-wracking coughs. "I don't know where to go. I have nowhere to go," she trails off. open image in gallery Mariam warned she would be displaced again and worried she had nowhere to go ( Family handout ) Inside the hospital, Amanda Nasser, who is volunteering with the Canadian medical charity GLIA, is frustrated that she has to leave her work to get in a convoy. All the international medics at Nasser had been told the night before that they must attend mandatory World Health Organisation (WHO) training about gender-based violence (GBV), off campus. The stifling wards, thick with the smell of death and decay, are over capacity, and so any medic leaving the hospital seems excessive. "Usually we can get [training] through some sort of lesson we can do remotely online," she recalls. "GBV is a problem happening as well. But obviously we're in the middle of a genocide." Another international GLIA volunteer, anaesthetist Dr Travis Melin, is equally bemused. Today is his last day in Gaza: why would he need to do this training now? "They usually plan things in advance. What felt funny to us was that all of a sudden, they said, 'Hey, there's mandatory training now,'" he remembers. Outside, the courtyard of the hospital, now a bustling tent city, is waking up in the blistering heat of the summer morning. Civilians who have fled their flattened homes across the 40km-long enclave have set up camp in the grounds of a complex that, under international law, is supposed to be protected. An ecosystem has sprung up: by the main gate there are people selling what meagre supplies are available; among them is Ali Abu Latifa. The biggest tent within the courtyard is long, topped with bright blue tarpaulin, and stretches alongside the eastern side of the compound. It is reserved for the journalists, also displaced, who effectively live here too. open image in gallery The Nasser Hospital complex in Gaza ( The Independent ) 9.45am Inside this tent, freelance journalist Abdallah al-Attar, 27, and videographer Moaz Abu Taha, are resting between reports. Abdallah is drifting in and out of sleep against the persistent whine of Israeli surveillance drones overhead. Also sheltering from the heat is veteran Ghad TV correspondent Ibrahim Qannan who, at 53, is widely seen as a father figure among the younger correspondents. He is speaking to Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Masri, 49, a father-of-four, who is worried about the harsh sun overheating his camera and interrupting the live feed on the external stairwell on the eastern side of the hospital. Hussam leaves to go and adjust it, while Ibrahim prepares for his 10am live broadcast just opposite. The friends bid one another farewell. Hussam makes his way across the street to the eastern external concrete "emergency" stairwell, which, capped by a wooden shelter, has become the known hangout spot for reporters to do their live stand-ups, have a cigarette or get mobile phone signal during the frequent power blackouts. A week and a half prior, a photo taken and posted by Mariam shows Hussam standing next to his camera which is draped in a green-and-white prayer rug to shield it from the heat. Mariam also spent most days there, checking her social media posts and filing her reports. In fact it is Mariam who apparently appears in Israeli surveillance footage, taken four days beforehand, according to screenshots obtained by The Independent . Head bent, she is seen hunched over her phone sitting next to the tripod and camera. Rafael Hayun, an Israeli civilian who says he monitors the situation in Gaza, provided an image to The Independent , declining to give its source and saying it showed the Hamas camera endangering troops. The Israeli military did not reply to a request for comment. But Reuters later confirmed the camera was their live feed of Khan Younis and that the Israeli military knew they had teams working in Nasser Hospital. The British news agency says in the days prior to the strike the feed had been capturing footage of Israeli military bulldozers demolishing parts of southern Gaza. open image in gallery Mariam also appeared in drone footage of the fourth-floor stairwell that journalists would use to get footage and network signals ( Supplied ) 10.09am Samaher, 39, Hussam al-Masri's wife, calls her husband as he stands next to his camera on the stairwell. She has just managed to locate and buy some vegetables at an extortionate price, so needs him to transfer funds into their account. Hussam sounds tired and worn out. Recently, Samaher, who is fighting ovarian cancer in the besieged territory where there is no treatment, has been worried her husband is becoming too morbid. "I just want to rest. I want to be martyred so I can finally rest," he tells her again in despair. Their conversation is cut short. A massive explosion erupts and the line goes dead. Ghad TV correspondent Ibrahim Qannan is standing by the eastern entrance to the complex, preparing to go live, when two deafening blasts rip open the skies. One projectile crashes into the northern side of the hospital, tearing through what has been nicknamed "the Titanic": a communal area, flanked by large windows, near the operating room, where medics rest between surgeries. The second smashes through the eastern external stairwell on the fourth floor. Through his viewfinder, Ibrahim can see a metre-wide hole clawed out of the stairwell exactly where his friend Hussam had been standing moments before. In his place is a cloud of ash and dust. Ibrahim immediately messages the Ghad TV main studio in Cairo to come to him now. "The hospital is being bombed," he repeats in shock. Journalists Abdallah al-Attar and Moaz Abu Taha are shaken awake inside the journalist tent. Abdallah doesn't even have time to put on proper shoes as, together with Moaz, he runs in the direction of the explosion. Ibrahim asks them what is happening as they run past. "Hussam, Hussam, Hussam," is all Moaz can reply. The explosions also rock the buildings opposite. Baraa grabs her press jacket and, quicker than Mariam, rushes out of the flat still in slippers. Just as she is leaving, she calls back to her friend who is still getting her things together, "I'm heading out ahead of you, ok?" Hatem Omar, another Reuters contractor, is also sprinting to the scene of the explosion, filming the crowds going both towards and away from the bomb site. Ahmed Abu Aziz, a stringer for Middle East Eye, in a black bucket hat, crosses in front of him in the melee. He too is filming on his mobile. First responders and journalists flock to Nasser hospital stairwell before being hit in a double-tap strike In the chaos, the journalists unwittingly split into two groups. Hatem, Ahmed, Moaz, Mariam, as well as Palestine TV cameraman Jamal Badah and Mohamed Salama, who works with Al Jazeera, start to ascend the stairwell towards Hussam's body. Others, including Mohamed Salama's younger brother Ibrahim, also a journalist, and Baraa, are filming the ground-floor entrance to the ER. From his stall by the entrance, Ali Abu Latifa sees a group of displaced civilians living in the complex have made it to the fourth floor shouting: "There are martyrs, there are martyrs!” He instinctively joins them to ferry down the wounded, a well-worn practice all in Gaza have learned to do. When he gets there, a man in a sleeveless vest and flip-flops is holding out to the crowds below the remains of what appears to be Hussam’s destroyed camera and live-feed devices. In the confusion, people begin to notice an Israeli quadcopter overhead and someone shouts, "There is another plane, they might bomb, go down!” Terrified of another imminent strike, Ali rushes down the stairwell, crossing paths with his neighbour and friend Mariam, who is intensely focused on reporting. She is wearing a white headscarf and black coat. Mariam is, as usual, one of the first on the scene. open image in gallery The stairwell as a rescue operation is underway ( Tabeth al Amour/The Independent ) 10.10am to 10.16am Dr Mohamed Sakr, the director of nursing at Nasser, had just been shaken out of a reverie by this enormous boom that he describes as "an earthquake". He looks out of the window of his office in a different block, to see smoke billowing from the northern and eastern side of the Yassin Building. It houses three of the most critical departments in the whole hospital: the ER, the operating room and the ICU. He scrambles to check on his staff. On his way into the ground-floor reception, he runs into Saja, one of his medical students, drenched in blood and staggering down from the fourth floor. On the northern side, one of the projectiles had punched through the walls, injuring medics as they worked. Saja has been injured in the head; she hands her blood-stained scrubs to the nursing director, who takes them downstairs to show the waiting journalists and the world. Baraa and others are filming with their mobiles as Dr Sakr steps into frame, holding the scrubs. "This belonged to a nurse waiting inside the operating department. She was targeted," he says in horror. A few hundred metres away, at the local civil defence HQ, the