2023-11-09 10:35:30
AFP
“Reattach my legs”: the terror of amputated children in Gaza at war
“Reattach my legs,” screams Layan al-Baz, 13, each time the pain wakes her up in her hospital bed, seized by fear following having been amputated. The child, met by a team of AFP at the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, in the south of the Gaza Strip, refuses to imagine herself with prostheses, if indeed she can have them fitted in a territory where the means of survival the most basic are missing. “I don’t want prosthetics, I want them to reattach my legs, they can do it,” protests Layan on his bed in the pediatric wing. Every time she opens her eyes, when the effect of the sedatives wears off, she sees her stumps covered in bandages. Her mother, Lamia al-Baz, explains that Layan was injured last week in a bombing in the al-Qarara neighborhood of Khan Yunis. Israel, determined to “annihilate” Hamas, is relentlessly bombing the Gaza Strip in retaliation for the deadly attacks carried out by the Palestinian Islamist movement on its territory on October 7, which left more than 1,400 dead, mostly civilians. Israeli bombings have left more than 10,000 dead, mainly civilians, according to the Hamas government. “How am I going to go back to school when my friends are walking and I’m not?” laments Layan, his face and arms bruised. injuries. “I will be by your side. Everything will be fine, the future is still ahead of you,” her mother tries to reassure her. According to this 47-year-old woman, the bombing killed two of her daughters, Ikhlas and Khitam, and two of his grandchildren, including a baby a few days old. They were all in the house of Ikhlas, who had just given birth. She had to identify her daughters at the morgue. “Their bodies were torn to pieces. I recognized Khitam by her earrings and Ikhlas by her toes,” she says.- “I will be strong” -In the burns treatment department, Lama al-Agha, 14 years old and her sister Sara, 15 years old, hospitalized following an attack on October 12, occupy two beds side by side. Their mother, struggling to hold back tears, sits in the middle. The bombing killed Sara’s twin sister, Sama, and their younger brother, Yehya, 12, the mother explains. Stitches and burn scars are visible on Lama’s partly shaved head and forehead. “When they transferred me here, I asked the nurses to help me sit up and I discovered that my leg had been amputated,” she says. “I felt a lot of pain but I thank God that I am still alive. I will have a prosthesis fitted and will continue my studies to realize my dream to become a doctor. I will be strong for myself and for my family”, adds Lama al-Agha with astonishing courage. Doctor Nahed Abou Taaema, director of the Nasser hospital, explains that faced with the large number of injured and lack of resources , doctors often have no choice but to perform an amputation to prevent any complications. “We have to choose between saving the patient’s life or putting it in danger by trying to save their injured leg,” he explains. .- “Where is my leg?” -Wearing a green football jersey and matching shorts, Ahmad Abou Shahmah, 14, surrounded by cousins, walks on crutches in the courtyard of his now-ruined house in eastern Khan Younès, where he was used to kicking a ball. His right leg was amputated following a bombing which destroyed the building housing his family, killing, according to him, six of his cousins and an aunt. “When I woke up (following the operation) I asked my brother ‘where is my leg’. He lied to me by telling me that it was there and that I mightn’t feel it because of the “anesthesia before my cousin told me the truth the next day,” he recalls. “I cried a lot. The first thing I thought was that I won’t be able to walk or play football like I used to. every day. I even enrolled in an academy a week before the war”, adds the boy. Ahmad is a supporter of the Spanish giant FC Barcelona while his cousins are unconditional fans of Real Madrid. “If it might bring him back go back in time and give Ahmad his leg once more, I would be willing to give up Real Madrid to become a Barcelona fan like him,” says one of them, Farid Abou Shahmah.my-ezz/smk/hme
1699527074
#severe #itching #sign #pancreatic #cancer
