There are hundreds of people killed in Gaza each day. Among them many children. No wonder that this bring aggression from the other side. Here is a very painful report.
How many Palestinian lives are equal to one European or Jewish person? Why Israel is squeezing Palestinians with no safe place to stay? what wrong these children did except being born in Gaza? 'Wounded child, no surviving family': The pain of Gaza’s orphans
4th December 2023, 09:19 MST
By Dalia HaidarBBC News Arabic
Mahmoud Aki
Three-year-old Ahmed Shabat lost his legs in an explosion in Gaza
Medics working in the Gaza Strip are using a specific phrase to describe a particular kind of war victim.
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"There's an acronym that's unique to the Gaza Strip, it's WCNSF - wounded child, no surviving family - and it's not used infrequently," Dr Tanya Haj-Hassan who works with Doctors Without Borders told BBC News.
The expression captures the horror of the situation for many Gazan children. Their lives change in a second - their parents, siblings and grandparents are killed, and nothing is the same ever again.
The war began after Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October killing 1,200 people and taking around 240 others hostage, and Israel launched its military campaign. More than 15,500 people have been killed in the conflict, including about 6,000 children, according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry.
Ahmed Shabat is one of those children who was described as a wounded child, with no surviving family, when he arrived injured and crying at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza. The three-year-old survived an air strike on his home in Beit Hanoun, in mid-November. But his father, mother and older brother were killed.
Miraculously, at the time he had only minor injuries. Later it was revealed his younger brother Omar, aged two, had also survived the strike and they were reunited after an adult member of the wider family was located.
"After the bombing, we learned there was a child in the Indonesian hospital with no-one accompanying him, so we went there immediately," Ahmed's uncle Ibrahim Abu Amsha explained. "Ahmed was with a stranger. He said Ahmed had been blown into the air and was found injured about 20m (65ft) from the house."
Ahmed and Omar were now orphans, homeless, with no shelter to protect them from continuous shelling, so Ibrahim decided to look after them, along with his own family. He initially took them to Sheikh Radwan city but said they left after "Ahmed was hit by glass fragments" from an explosion.
They then went to Nuseirat camp to stay in a UN-affiliated school. But even in their new location, they were hit again, with devastating consequences for Ahmed.
"I ran out of the school's door and saw Ahmed in front of me on the ground, both legs gone. He was crawling towards me, opening his arms, seeking help." A family member, who was with Ahmed at the time of the blast, was killed.
Ibrahim, who is still displaced with his own family as well as his sister's children, says he dreams of being able to send Ahmed for treatment outside Gaza.
"He wanted to be many things," his uncle said sadly. "When we went out together to attend football matches, he said he wished to become a famous football player."
