As Israeli tanks and troops laid siege to the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza last week, volunteer medical worker Fikri Rofiul Haq faced the choice of evacuating to safety or staying with his patients, Al Jazeera reports.

Haq and fellow his Indonesian colleagues, Reza Aldilla Kurniawan and Farid Zazabil Al Ayubi — volunteers with the Jakarta-based Medical Emergency Rescue Committee (MER-C) — opted to stay put until the Israeli military forced them to leave, he said.

“Before we were evacuated, the attacks got worse and worse, hour by hour,” said Haq, who was unable to communicate for several weeks until his evacuation to Khan Younis.

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