¡®Want to Play, Give My Legs Back¡¯: Gaza City Echoes With The Cries Of Child Amputees

"I want them to put my legs back, they can do it," Layan al-Baz says in desperation from her bed at a hospital's paediatric ward.

AFP

What happened?

Baz cries in agony when the effect fades of the painkillers she receives after her legs were amputated -- the result of a strike on Gaza as Israel fights Hamas. "I don't want a false leg," the 13-year-old Palestinian tells AFP.

Her mother, Lamia al-Baz, 47, says Baz was wounded last week in a strike on Al-Qarara district of Khan Yunis.

Lamia says two of her daughters, Ikhlas and Khitam, and two grandchildren, including a newborn baby, were killed when the Israeli strike hit Ikhlas's home. The family were there to support Ikhlas, who had just given birth.

"Their bodies were in shreds," says Lamia, who had to identify her daughters' bodies at a morgue. "I identified Khitam by her earrings and Ikhlas by her toes."

Baz, her face and arms dotted with injuries, asks: "How will I return to school when my friends walk and I can't?"

At the hospital's burns unit, 14-year-old Lama al-Agha and her sister Sara, 15, lie in adjacent beds. They are treated after an October 12 strike that killed Sara's twin Sama and brother Yahya, 12, says their mother, sitting between the two hospital beds and struggling to hold back tears. Stitches and burn scars are visible on Lama's half-shaved head and her forehead.

AFP

"When they transferred me here, I asked the nurses to help me sit up, and I discovered that my leg was amputated," the 14-year-old recalls.

"I've been through a lot of pain, but I thank God that I'm still alive." Lama is determined not to let her injury decide her future. "I'll get an artificial leg and continue my studies, so I can achieve my dream of becoming a doctor. I will be strong for me and for my family," she says.

Ahmad Abu Shahmah, 14, uses crutches to walk around the ruins of his family¡¯s home in Khan Yunis. Now surrounded by several of his cousins, Abu Shahmah is at the courtyard where he used to play football. But the building was destroyed in a strike that killed six of his cousins and an aunt.

"When I woke up (after surgery) I asked my brother, 'where is my leg?'" he recalls. "He lied to me and said it was right there, and that I couldn't feel it because of the anaesthetics."

The following day, "my cousin told me the truth", says Abu Shahmah.

"I cried a lot. The first thing I thought about was that I will no longer be able to walk or play football like I would every day. I signed up to an academy one week before the war."

Where and when?

The heart-wrenching incident was witnessed on Tuesday at Khan Yunis's Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip, where getting artificial limbs was nearly impossible anyway.

Why?

The attacks are a result of Israel's unrelenting military campaign in response to bloody Hamas attacks on October 7 that Israeli officials say killed more than 1,400 people, most of them civilians. While health ministry in Gaza said that nearly 9,500 people have been killed in Gaza since the war erupted, including at least 3,900 children.

Reuters

How is the situation right now?

The impoverished Palestinian territory, under a crippling Israeli-led blockade for years and besieged since war erupted on October 7, suffers severe shortages of food, water and fuel, and medical supplies are scarce.

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