In the chaos caused by the ongoing fighting and with entire families almost wiped out, medics and rescuers often struggle to find carers for bereaved children.
“We have lost contact with her family,” the nurse tells us. “None of her relatives have shown up and we don’t know what happened to her father.”
Children, who make up nearly half of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million, have had their lives shattered by the brutal war.
Although Israel says it strives to avoid civilian casualties, including issuing evacuation orders, more than 11,500 under-18s have been killed according to Palestinian health officials. Even more have injuries, many of them life-changing.
It is hard to get accurate figures but according to a recent report from Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a non-profit group, more than 24,000 children have also lost one or both parents.
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“We just call her the daughter of Hanna Abu Amsha,” says nurse Warda al-Awawda, who is caring for the tiny newborn at the al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza.
In the chaos caused by the ongoing fighting and with entire families almost wiped out, medics and rescuers often struggle to find carers for bereaved children.
It is hard to get accurate figures but according to a recent report from Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, a non-profit group, more than 24,000 children have also lost one or both parents.
The cousins of the Hussein family used to play together but now they sit solemnly by the sandy graves where some of their relatives are buried by a school-turned-shelter in central Gaza.
“Many of these children have been found under the rubble or have lost their parents in the bombing of their home,” Jonathan Crickx, chief of communications for Unicef Palestine, tells me from Rafah in southern Gaza.
She was brought in with selective mutism, an anxiety disorder which left her unable to speak about what had happened to her and her family, but is now making progress after being welcomed with gifts and playing with other children she lives with.
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