ADRIAN MA, HOST:
More than 1,300 people have been killed in Iran in the past week. That's according to the Iranian Red Crescent. And at Turkey's border with Iran, NPR's Ruth Sherlock spoke with an Iranian doctor who's been treating some of the wounded.
(CROSSTALK)
RUTH SHERLOCK, BYLINE: A slender woman with delicate features arrives at the Turkish side of the border with Iran. She looks dazed and exhausted.
(SOUNDBITE OF ROLLING SUITCASE)
SHERLOCK: She drags her suitcase to a shed serving tea.
We don't want to put you in danger.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: Yeah. Yeah.
SHERLOCK: Even now, outside of Iran, she fears giving her name because the Iranian regime is threatening those who speak with foreign journalists. She's a doctor in a hospital in Tehran. She describes people wounded in American and Israeli airstrikes being rushed into the wards.
What kind of injuries did they have?
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: Everything - any injuries you can imagine. We had lots of trauma, head trauma, foot, leg, body and abdomen. For example, we had lots of kidney laceration, spleen laceration surgeries - very big surgeries, lots of amputation of foots.
SHERLOCK: She says there are so many injured because people's homes are being hit.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: Many of these streets which are residential - not one or two - they bombard.
SHERLOCK: She explains government buildings are tightly packed in among the residential complexes in this city of over 9 million people.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: Of course, you have the houses - they are very close to everything.
SHERLOCK: On the second day of the war, a strike on an antenna for a state television and radio broadcaster destroyed wards of a major hospital, forcing patients to evacuate to other places. The doctor needs to catch an onward flight from Van, the nearest city in Turkey, and we go with her in the car.
(SOUNDBITE OF CAR ENGINE RUNNING)
SHERLOCK: Her hands tremble and eyes dart as she talks about the moment an airstrike hit close to her home.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: The sound was something like deafening sound. Even I couldn't hear for a long time. It was something like a head trauma. I couldn't memorize what time is it. And it was exactly like that for one, two hours for me because I was something like shaking, and my heartbeat was something like - I don't know - 200-something. And I couldn't even breathe. And everywhere was full of broken glasses of the windows and smoke and the sulfur smell.
SHERLOCK: That explosion, she says, flattened an apartment building.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: All the time, I'm thinking about that situation that happened for us. And it was in our neighborhood. And a big building, four-story building, full of residents are gone right now.
SHERLOCK: Of the people she knows in the building, she's not sure who is alive and who is dead. She left Tehran in a taxi to the border with Turkey. And on the way, she says, an airstrike hit what looked like a factory just on the other side of the road.
UNIDENTIFIED DOCTOR: It was exploding. It was so horrible. I was just scared. I - just shouting, oh, my God. And it was such a - the driver - he said, OK, just sit. Just sit. Don't say anything. And he was scared, as well.
SHERLOCK: This journey out of the country for the doctor was already planned. She's going to see her pregnant daughter who lives abroad. But now it's hard to know when she can go back. Ruth Sherlock, NPR News in Turkey, on the border with Iran. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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