Sami’s pain is the pain of every child in Gaza: a doctor’s testimony
8-year-old Sami arrived at the Al-Aqsa Hospital with a blast injury to his face
Dr. Mimi Syed writes in The Palestine Chronicle on 1 April 2025:
On December 14, 2024, in the afternoon, I was working in the emergency room at Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir al-Balah. During a mass casualty incident that day, we had dozens of patients arrive after an air raid on a refugee camp nearby.
One of those patients was an 8-year-old little boy named Sami. He was carried in by another boy not much older than him. He was transported by a donkey cart because automobiles had been destroyed for the most part, and new ones were blocked from entering.
Sami had a blast injury to his face, ripping apart most of the vital structures. His mouth, nose, and eyelids were all injured. The rest of his body was fine except for a couple of minor wounds. When he got to the resuscitation bay, he was laid on the gurney with no adult in sight yet.
He was covered in a bloody jacket with a red-and-white striped shirt underneath. As I removed the jacket with my trauma shears, I felt a heavy burden. This little boy, who was fighting for his life after a US-funded bomb dropped on his family’s home, was being treated by an American-born doctor.
While he lay gurgling and choking on his own blood in front of me, I suctioned his mouth and nose to remove any obstruction in his airway. Just a slight movement in his face, and I realized his entire jaw was dislocated and ripped off, hanging on by a small piece of skin. There was shrapnel and burn wounds on his entire face and neck.
While I was working on him, another mass casualty incident came in with even more critically injured patients. I was forced to move little Sami on to the ground so as to make space for the other wounded patients to lay. While I lay him on the ground, his mother and uncle arrived screaming with fear.
His mother immediately threw herself to the ground and started praying to God that her son be spared. She looked me straight in the eyes and grabbed my hand firmly, begging me to do everything to save him. I nodded my head with reassurance, but deep down, I knew there was no promise like that I could make. Given his condition, I knew it would be a miracle if he were saved.