Blood stained the staircases and corridors. Screams from the injured filled six whole floors, where bodies lay torn apart by live ammunition, birdshot and shrapnel. Hundreds of corpses lay stacked in the main halls and corridors as the doctors' continuous cries for help echoed out while they tried, with minimal capabilities, to save whomever they could before the wounded gasped their last breath.

Hours after security forces stormed the perimeter of Rabia al-Adawiya Square to forcefully disperse the pro-Morsi sit-in, the hospital became the locus of a never-before-seen sight in Egypt.

“Keep your head low and run” came the warning from an individual standing a few meters from the hospital entrance. A sniper from the security forces had been targeting all passersby and visitors to the hospital to prevent the delivery of aid or medicine, which had been depleted inside. From the moment the confrontation started early Wednesday morning, Aug. 14, and until the hospital was overrun and burned, at least eight people were killed in the area, shot by a sniper atop a building facing the hospital entrance.