Fatema Yahya is an Egyptian neurosurgeon who treated those wounded and killed in the Rabaa Massacre and survived the massacre herself.
Today marks 13 years since the Rabaa massacre, a horrifying assault on humanity by those now ruling Egypt. The massacre came less than three years after Egypt's 2011 uprising, when millions took to the streets demanding an end to Hosni Mubarak's nearly three-decade rule, calling for democracy and an end to authoritarian rule. Rabaa was the worst single-day mass killing in Egypt's modern history, in which the regime killed at least 817 people and more likely over 1,000. Having witnessed the countless crimes against my fellow Egyptian citizens that day, the world cannot be allowed to forget this crime.
In 2012, Mohamed Morsi became Egypt's first democratically elected civilian president. He was later toppled in a military coup on July 3, 2013, bringing Egypt's brief democratic experiment to an abrupt end. The Rabaa al-Adawiya sit-in in Cairo emerged as a direct consequence of the coup, as supporters of Egypt's democratic transition gathered to demand the restoration of the country's elected government in opposition to military rule. On Aug. 14, security forces moved to violently disperse the sit-in.
As a neurosurgeon, I volunteered at the Rabaa Field Hospital that day, located just across the street from Rabaa Square. I had been volunteering there since the Republican Guard massacre that July, driven to support those exercising their basic rights in support of Egyptian democracy and against the repressive status quo.
Rabaa was the worst single-day mass killing in Egypt's modern history, in which the regime killed at least 817 people and more likely over 1,000.
- Fatema Yahya
The night before the attack, I received several warnings from friends and colleagues that something serious was expected at the sit-in. One of my sources worked at a military hospital and had information that significantly concerned him. Despite these warnings, I decided to stay, believing that my fate was connected to those around me. I could not bring myself to leave them.
The atmosphere that day initially appeared calm. I began to think that the warnings were intended to frighten people into leaving the square. Exhausted from preparing for a previous event, I eventually tried to sleep.
About an hour later, I awoke to an emergency call. At first, I thought the reports of an attack might be rumors. While checking social media atop the clinic located next to our field hospital, the Rabaa Aladawyea Medical Center, I saw smoke near the Tiba Mall to the east and began hearing gunfire.
I immediately returned to the field hospital outside. We distributed gas masks among our team and began implementing our emergency plan, which divided the medical team so that less severe cases, including birdshot injuries and gas exposure, could be treated separately from patients suffering severe injuries from live ammunition. These preparations failed to prepare us for what came next.
The first people who arrived were already dead. Many had devastating injuries that left us unable to save them. We attempted emergency treatment as more wounded arrived, including intubation and stabilization, hoping they could eventually be transferred to intensive care either in the medical center or a more advanced hospital.
Transfers, however, quickly became impossible. Ambulances could not safely reach or leave the area because the army and security forces blocked access, leaving nearby hospitals inaccessible. The field hospital was quickly overwhelmed by those fleeing the square, forcing us to perform triage under extreme circumstances. We had to decide which patients might benefit from our limited resources, and which were unlikely to survive.
The field hospital was quickly overwhelmed by those fleeing the square, forcing us to perform triage under extreme circumstances. We had to decide which patients might benefit from our limited resources, and which were unlikely to survive.
- Fatema Yahya
The floor of the field hospital was covered in blood. I had treated critically injured patients throughout my medical career, but I had never witnessed injuries on this scale or of this severity.
As the situation continued to rapidly deteriorate, more injured people arrived. I learned that the Egyptian security forces and military were shooting protestors and arresting medical volunteers as they neared the medical compound, leaving injured people without medical care.
One case remains particularly painful for me. An unconscious patient arrived with a devastating head injury. His pupils were still reactive. Under normal circumstances, I would have intubated him and arranged an urgent transfer to intensive care. With transfer impossible, I believed that using our scarce resources on him would not change the outcome. We could not provide the definitive treatment he needed.
His friend pleaded with me to save him. As a physician, it was unbearable to know what I could normally do for such a patient while understanding that the circumstances made it impossible.
As more people died, I felt that I had stopped functioning as a physician. Instead, I became an undertaker, repeatedly witnessing death. At one point, a severely injured man arrived carrying the head and brain of his friend. The sight horrified me and remains one of the most traumatic images I have ever seen.
The hospital became overcrowded with both the wounded and the dead. We had to move bodies aside to accommodate patients who might still be helped. As neurosurgical intervention was impossible, I began providing first aid, regardless of specialty. At that point, we simply tried to save whoever we could.
The violence increasingly impacted the field hospital and medical center. The Egyptian military and security services fired live ammunition and tear gas toward us, forcing us to move between the medical center and field hospital. We eventually learned that injured patients could be transferred to the nearby medical center, but reaching it was dangerous because gunfire and tear gas were directed at people attempting to enter.
The number of patients quickly overwhelmed the field hospital and, eventually, the medical center itself. Patients filled operating rooms, beds, floors and corridors. We lacked the personnel, anesthesia, medication, equipment or space to provide treatment. Critically injured patients begged for pain relief and expressed their fear of dying. We continued working despite the overwhelming shortages.
Injuries continued arriving faster than we could treat them. Now in the medical center, I could see large numbers of wounded people outside who could not enter. At one point, I tried to provide basic supplies to anyone who needed it.
Eventually, the hospital itself came under direct threat. Explosions and tear gas entered the building, and we realized that the Egyptian military and security services were breaching the facility. We were ultimately forced to the back of the medical center and its upper floors with any patients we could bring with us. Once inside, soldiers ordered medical personnel to leave, despite our protests that we could not abandon our injured patients. In one instance, I watched a soldier hold a gun to one of my colleagues as he fought to save a patient, telling him, "It's either your life or his life."
Despite the chaos, I wanted to remain with the wounded. Eventually, soldiers ordered everyone to leave with their hands raised, continuing to threaten doctors who demanded to stay with their patients. Families, including women and children, surrendered. Some relatives remained beside their wounded loved ones, comforting them and helping them recite the Shahada.
After hours of chaos, I was forced to leave, carrying an overwhelming sense of guilt because I felt that I had abandoned my patients. I later learned that many of the injured people who remained inside were not transferred to hospitals. Rather, the field hospital that we had fled was burned.
What I witnessed did not end when I left Rabaa. I continue to experience nightmares and sleeplessness. I am haunted by the screams of the wounded and dying, especially those of the patients I could not save. It was not that medical treatment was necessarily impossible, but that the circumstances made proper treatment impossible.
As a physician and eyewitness, what happened at Rabaa was not simply a political conflict or an ordinary dispersal of a sit-in. I witnessed overwhelming numbers of wounded and dead, devastating injuries, the inability to evacuate patients, attacks affecting medical facilities and personnel and the destruction of medical care. The next day, I saw burned bodies at the Al-Iman Mosque. The Egyptian state remains responsible.
Remembering Rabaa cannot be enough. The passage of time must not become a substitute for accountability.
Those responsible for the killings and the systematic repression that followed must be held accountable. That responsibility extends beyond the Egyptian officials and security forces who carried out the massacre to those who enabled, armed, financed or shielded the regime from meaningful consequences.
Despite my helplessness, guilt, exhaustion and trauma, I continue to rely upon God. I pray for mercy for those who were killed, healing for those who survived and strength for their families. I remember the victims not as numbers, but as human beings whose lives, families and futures were taken from them.
Photo of the author: Dr. Fatema Yahya wears a gas mask at their field hospital as her team prepared emergency measures for a potential surge of injured patients on Aug. 14, 2013.
The views and positions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of DAWN.
