Girl, 9, among thousands of critical patients stuck in Gaza

Editor’s Note: This article contains a distressing image. The girl’s mother gave permission to use it to show the world what her daughter was going through. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Hanan Aqel and her sister had one shekel each in their hands, a gift from their grandfather to go and buy sweets.

It was a glimmer of familial normality in Gaza for a nine-year-old and her younger sibling that ended in tragedy.

“I didn’t hear its whizzing or anything, I only saw a red light when the missile fell,” Hanan recalls from her hospital bed in Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in central Gaza.

Her voice is hoarse and cracked, following reconstructive surgery to her face. She has 20% burns to her face, hands, chest, and leg. Her sister, five-year-old Leene, who was walking ahead of her, escaped injury.

“There was a man next to me dismembered and bleeding and a block of building cement fell on me,” Hanan says.

Hanan is one of thousands of critically ill patients waiting for medical evacuation from Gaza but unable to leave following the closure of the Rafah crossing to Egypt in early May.

After the airstrike, her father rushed her to hospital, where she also had surgery to remove shrapnel from her face. Her doctor, Mahmoud Mahane, specializes in burns and eye injuries, but says there is nothing more they can do for her inside Gaza.

“Most children need medical transfers,” he says, “for a more qualified treatment than here, as we don’t have the treatment or tools and we don’t have the supplies, we lack these supplies.”

Eight months of war have decimated the Gazan health system. Tens of thousands of injured Palestinians and a severe lack of medicine, doctors, and electricity, have proved a lethal combination.

The only hope for many is to be evacuated through the Rafah crossing into Egypt and get treatment in neighboring countries. That lifeline has been cut off since May 7 when the Israeli military took control of the crossing and closed it.

Egypt says it will not open the crossing until the Israeli military withdraws. It cites security reasons – one Egyptian soldier was killed last month in fighting along the border.

Israel says it will not hand over control of the crossing to Palestinian authorities, fearing Hamas would use the area to smuggle in weapons. sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv sbv

The post Girl, 9, among thousands of critical patients stuck in Gaza appeared first on The Muslim News.