The choices Dr. Razan Al-Nahhas was faced with daily in Gaza could not have been more dire as she sought to treat wave after wave of injured Palestinians.

The emergency medicine physician said her colleagues attempted to prepare her for the grim realities that she was to encounter on her five-week volunteer tour, but said in an interview with Anadolu Agency that nothing could have braced her for what she encountered.

"There's no way to really, truly express the emotions, the trauma that you feel in that moment, seeing family members just devastated, crying over the bodies of their children, their family, their relatives. There was no way they could have prepared me for that, as much as they tried to," Al-Nahhas recalled.

"Just the feeling of almost hopelessness that you have when you're there, because you see these patients, and you so desperately want to treat them and take care of them, and you know that you can't," she added.

Al-Nahhas recalled being forced to decide which patients would be provided with life-saving care amid the "sheer number of casualties" that were flowing into Aqsa al-Shuhada in Deir al-Balah amid relentless Israeli bombardment and aid restrictions that forced medical facilities to operate on a patchwork basis.

"As healthcare providers, we should be caring for every single patient, but with the limited resources and just the sheer number of casualties, you're put in this position where you have no choice, and that's a feeling that I had never experienced before," she said.

"Now, as far as the aid getting delivered, it's not, it's not getting in. I mean, you know, it's a hit or miss. Some weeks are better than others. But even when the aid does get in, it is just the bare minimum," she added.

Over 44,700 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its war on the coastal enclave in response to the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 cross-border attack. The UN estimates that 70% of the Palestinian dead have been women and children. Over 100,000 others have been injured.

Some 1,200 people were killed in the Oct. 7 attack, and 250 others were taken back to Gaza as hostages. Roughly 100 remain there.