No child should ever see the horrors of Gaza
The author conducting malnutrition monitoring in a displacement camp in Khan Younis in July 2024
Hadeel Awad writes in Al Jazeera on 15 January 2025:
For 15 months now, Gaza’s children have been reduced to a statistic. The death toll reported gives a specific count for children. Malnourishment and starvation are reported in terms of numbers of children they have affected and killed. Even the cold weather is measured in terms of how many babies it has killed in makeshift tents.
But behind these numbers lie heartbreaking stories of Palestinian children whose childhood has been cut short. As a nurse working at al-Shifa Medical Complex and then in a makeshift clinic in a displacement camp, I have come across so many painful stories of children suffering amid this hideous war. Seeing so many children suffer has made the misery of trying to survive a genocide that much more unbearable.
In early November 2023, when I was on shift at the emergency department, several injured people were rushed in after yet another violent bombing. I went to attend to one of them: 10-year-old Tala. When I checked on her, I saw that her arm had already been amputated and she had severe burns all over her body. She was crying intensely, asking about her aunt. I did not know what to say. I gave her a painkiller to calm her down a little. I tried to talk to her and ease her tears. She told me that she had lost all her family due to a previous bombing of her house. She was not at home, so she became the only survivor. She was taken in by her aunt and was staying at her house, when a missile struck a neighbouring building. The explosion and shrapnel injured her.
As the effect of the painkiller wore off, Tala started crying hard again from the physical and mental pain of what had happened to her. It was heart-rendering to see this little girl suffering so much. She was supposed to be going to school, playing with her friends, embracing her family. And here she was all alone, in unbearable pain and grief. How was she going to continue her life?
After every visit to her bed, I cried. She stayed for two weeks at the hospital and was eventually discharged to her aunt.
Tala was just one of many children I saw at the emergency department of al-Shifa before we were banished by the Israelis at the end of November. Most of the bombing victims I treated were children. Many had injuries like Tala, some much worse than hers. The vast majority of them had seen members of their families either torn to pieces, bleeding to death or severely injured. Too many were left orphans.