Richard Villar, from Bowness, is a distinguished orthopaedic surgeon with extensive experience as a war surgeon. Having served as the Medical Officer to the SAS and has been active in over 30 conflict zone including Somalia, Lebanon and Ethiopia. The 71-year-old has been to Gaza three times with his first time being in 2018 during the Gaza border protests, also known as the Great March of Return.
He was contacted by the Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP) to help this year after the attacks began on October 7 2023. After travelling from Cairo in Egypt to do basic training across the Sinai Peninsula, Mr Villar entered Gaza just after seven volunteers from World Central Kitchen were killed in an Israeli air strike. "That was late March and that was exactly the time we were going in," he said.
"Humanitarian workers were definitely being targeted. The MAP operation in Gaza had already been attacked by missiles on one occasion before we got there. "The surviving rate of the humanitarian workers was not good.
" Despite all this, Mr Villar found himself working at al-Aqsa Hospital in the city of Deir Al Balah - a 200-bed hospital overrun with 700 patients, including many women and children. No one in this photograph was being paid for their work on the ward (Image: Submitted) Richard and five other fellow volunteer doctors joined the surgical team. "There were beds but most patients were on the floor because we simply did not have enough beds for that number of patients," he said.
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