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Rabat – The Gaza Strip’s Ministry of Health announced a staggering death toll of 39,145 since the onset over nine months ago of Israeli Occupation Forces ongoing massacres.
At Al-Aqsa Hospital, the scene is harrowing. Children, some with injuries from shrapnel and ball-bearing shells, fill the wards. Among them is nine-year-old Abdelaziz, who lies in a critical condition on a hospital bed. His prognosis is grim.
“He is 60% burned and has multiple shrapnel wounds,” says Mohammad Tahir, an Anglo-Iraqi pediatric surgeon. “Small pieces of metal are lodged in his head, arms, and legs.”
The situation in Gaza has spiraled out of control, according to Tahir. “Schools are being attacked one after another, as well as refugee camps. I have never seen so many victims since I arrived in Gaza. This past week, the intensity of the attacks is indescribable.”
Many of Tahir’s young patients have bodies riddled with shrapnel. This, he says, is a consequence of the Israeli army’s use of multi-fragmentation shells, which scatter clouds of small metal balls upon explosion.
“I have seen countless cases of children with shrapnel embedded from head to toe. They have severed arteries, severed nerves. Using such explosives near children causes maximum damage, and that’s what we see today.”
The injuries caused by these munitions are often invisible to the naked eye, as the metal pierces the skin and causes significant internal damage.
These injuries frequently force doctors to perform amputations. UNICEF reports that in just the first three months of the conflict, more than 1,000 children in Gaza have had one or both legs amputated.
