Rabaa, Egypt: I Have Seen Patients With Their Heads Blown Out

Islam Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian doctor who was protesting at Rabaa in Cairo found himself trying to save his fellow protesters as their camp came under brutal siege by Egyptian security forces on August 14, 2013.

He narrated his first-hand horrific account in a public Facebook note:

I have seen patients with their heads blown out and their brain tissue on the floor. I have seen many victims with precise wounds in their head or neck, being shot by snippers.
[…]
Floors became covered with blood and new patients were passing above the ones already on the floors. I worked like a machine and was not believing that I lived to see this happening in my country. I volunteered at Tahrir square field hospital at 2011 but it can not be comparable to the massacre of Rabaa. I could not take any pics or documents for the patients being very busy trying save some lives. Smell of death was everywhere and mu clothes were covered completely with blood.

Security forces initiated a bloody crackdown on August 14 to clear supporters of Egypt's ousted president Mohamed Morsi from sit-in camps in the capital Cairo, where they have been camped for weeks, demanding the Muslim Brotherhood politician's reinstatement. The Egyptian government says 638 people died across the country on August 14, but the final toll could be higher. A Muslim Brotherhood spokesman has said 2,000 people were killed in the “massacre.”

Read more in our Special Coverage Bloodbath in Egypt.

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