4-year-old Gaza boy hit twice by tragedy

Gaza: The boy keeps asking for his parents, and he wants to get up and walk, but his parents are dead and his legs have been amputated.

That is the plight of Ahmed Shabat, a four-year-old boy whose parents were killed when their home in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northeastern corner of the Gaza Strip was hit by an Israeli airstrike.

“The child asks every day. ‘Where is my father? Where is my mother? Every single day. But we try very hard to make him forget, and adjust to the situation he is currently in,” said Ahmed’s uncle, Ibrahim Abu Amsha, who has become his guardian.

Abu Amsha said the force of the blast threw the boy into a neighboring house and killed 17 family members in total. The only other survivor was Ahmed’s two-year-old brother.

More than 52,000 people lived in Beit Hanoun before the war. There is barely a single inhabitable building still standing there, according to a report in Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth.

Abu Amsha said he and other extended family members took in the two little boys at their home in Nuseirat refugee camp, in a different part of the strip, south of Gaza City, only for it to be hit by another Israeli strike.

Both of Ahmed’s legs were



catastrophically injured. With the boy’s life in danger, he was taken to Shuhada Al-Aqsa hospital in Deir Al-Balah, a town further south, where Dr. Ahmed Zayyan took him into his care.

“We are going to carry out lower limb amputation due to severe lower limb lacerations, to the right leg. The amputation is above the knee. Same for the left leg,” he said.

“The operation on a child is difficult because you have to specify the location of the vein, the artery and the nerves, and to isolate and separate them, which takes time.

“We try to carry it out as fast as possible, to supply the child with the blood he lost when he was injured ... We hope for the best.”

Ahmed is now recovering. At his bedside, his uncle stroked his face and gave him a toy car, but the boy tossed it away.

“He asked me a number of times, he wants to get out of bed and walk. He asked me more than once, and I have told him that we should wait until his leg feels better, or after we take the medicine,” said Abu Amsha. 

“He does not feel that he lost his legs, but we will have to try very hard, just like we try to make him forget his parents, to make him forget this.”