In Gaza, the cases of “the wounded child and no family alive” show the depth of the crisis

A wounded child, no family alive.

“In the emergency department, after the airstrike, there are a lot of relatives around the family of the wounded,” said Ghassan Abu Sitta, a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon who spent weeks treating wounded people in Gaza. “But there would be a gurney where the child could be alone, and there was no movement around him, and no one to ask about him.”

Doctors and aid workers say these unaccompanied children often suffer horrific injuries: deep tissue burns, lung contusions, brain damage, loss of limbs and shrapnel wounds. Some arrive unconscious. Some need immediate resuscitation.

UNICEF spokesman James Elder, who spent time in Gaza last year, described encountering children who had lost their entire families as a “terrifying frequency.” Some looked as if they had “just been broken and poorly put together, awaiting multiple surgeries,” he said.

Gaza becomes a “cemetery for children” as Israel intensifies its air strikes

Abu Sitta said that doctors at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest medical facility in Gaza before the outbreak of the current conflict, noticed during the first weeks of the war that after every air strike there were unaccompanied children who needed to be hospitalized and treated. They have come up with The WCNSF's primary principle is to ensure that hospital staff designate someone to care for them.

Abu Sitta said that he often saw relatives of nearby patients doing their homework.

on Abu Sitta said that 120 WCNSF cases of children between the ages of 1 and 14 were recorded in Shifa, before most patients and staff were evacuated. In the wake of an Israeli The facility was raided in November. It is not known where these children ended up. Doctors at Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza and the Indonesian Hospital in the north say they have treated at least twenty of these children.

The ten doctors and aid workers interviewed by The Washington Post for this report said that the raging conflict made it difficult to provide a full count of the victims. All WCNSF cases across the sector. Medical workers said that amid the communications blackouts and chaos of the mass exodus, it is also possible that some children have been reunited with relatives.

This month, UNICEF estimated that about 17,000 children in Gaza are unaccompanied or separated from their families.

Israeli forces destroyed more than 70,000 housing units, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and damaged another 290,000 units – an attack the agency describes as “house killings.” Abu Sitta said that people in Gaza are seeking refuge where they believe they may be safer; Extended families are often crowded into one unit. “When the Israelis bomb that apartment, it will erase three generations,” he said.

The phenomenon, “It underscores the indiscriminate nature and ferocity of these attacks as families scrambled to try and stay safe,” Elder said.

He said that in Khan Yunis he met 13-year-old Muhammad from Jabalia, who survived an attack that killed his entire family in November. Elder said the boy had terrible burns to his face, but was still in pain He will raise his arm to give a thumbs up.

When asked to comment, the Israeli military said it was not yet possible to provide an accurate count of “the degree of destruction caused to Palestinian homes.” the Israeli Defense Army “Its actions are based on military necessity and in accordance with international law,” she said.

Pediatrician Seema Jilani, senior technical advisor for emergency health at the International Rescue Committee, who returned from Gaza last month, said most of the wounds she saw among children were injuries caused by explosions.

She described an 11-year-old girl believed to be an unaccompanied child. Her face and upper neck were blackened and charred. “Her arms were stuck in a bent position,” Al-Jilani said.

““I would be surprised if she recovered,” she said.

These children were rescued from Gaza. What future awaits them?

Even for doctors accustomed to the horrors of war of mutilated bodies and severe injuries, they see these wounded The orphans came as a shock.

Ahmed Al-Makhalati, a plastic surgeon who worked at Al-Shifa Hospital and the European Hospital in Gaza, said he had treated at least 25 WCNSF cases. He added that he tries to prevent his emotions from interfering with his work, but on several occasions he found himself unable to perform surgery.

“It's really hard to perform when you think about these kids, their future, their dreams, what their lives are going to look like, what they're going to live the rest of their lives,” he said. “I just try to take a deep breath and say that [a] “Life is hard, but God will be there for them, and I have to work again.”

Since the beginning of the war, aid agencies have issued warnings about the horrific toll it is taking on children. Nearly 10% of Gazan children under the age of five suffer from acute malnutrition, according to the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. According to UNICEF, about 1,000 children lost one or both legs. Save the Children says those who remained physically unharmed, They suffer from serious psychological trauma.

But the greatest burden is on children, doctors and aid workers say Losing their families. In some cases, orphans are not informed immediately.

The Israeli attack forced a nurse to leave her children behind. It was found decomposed.

“They don't yet know that their lives are more broken and sadder than they imagined,” said UNICEF's Elder. The agency helps Formalize legal guardianship procedures with extended family members for unaccompanied and separated children, and work to establish hospital facilities to support them. But ongoing hostilities and pressure on the health care system, she says, are slowing the process.

Nurse Amal Abu Khatla said that when an unaccompanied baby girl was brought to the Emirates Maternity Hospital in Rafah, she did not scream or laugh. Khatla, who did her best to take care of her, said: “She deserves all the tenderness in the world.” When no family came forward after two months, Khatla took in the baby girl. She named the girl Malak – an Arabic word meaning “angel.”

Jilani, a humanitarian worker for more than two decades, said responsibility for the future of these orphans lies with the international community, which must push for a “sustainable ceasefire and expanded humanitarian access.”

“Otherwise, this war is generating a generation of orphans who currently have no access to education, cannot access school, cannot play or develop educationally, and cannot access health and hygiene services,” she said.

“It's a very bleak picture and a very bleak future.”

Loay Ayyoub, Heba Farouk Mahfouz and Hazem Balousha contributed to this report.