|
| In this photo made on Wednesday, Aug 6, 2014, Shaker Abu Shawqah, wounded during a shelling in Nusseirat refugee camp in his legs and arm, rests in a basement of a building in Gaza City. More than 9,000 Palestinians, the majority of them civilians and nearly a third among them children, have been wounded in the month long Gaza war. |
GAZA CITY, Gaza
Strip (AP) -- When an Israeli airstrike hit the Gaza home for the
handicapped where she was staying, Sally Saqr was left shattered. Her
pelvis, both legs and an arm were broken, her skull fractured, much of
her body burned. In the hospital, doctors couldn't put her limbs in
casts because multiple other wounds had to heal first.
But
after a week, her mother had to take the 20 year old home because
Gaza's main Shifa Hospital needed the bed as more broken bodies flowed
in every day from the bombardment.
Saqr has
been severely handicapped since birth because of complications during
delivery. She can't speak, her body never developed beyond the size of a
child. She was able to walk - with difficulty - but after her wounds in
the July 12 airstrike, she couldn't walk at all, and had to be put in
diapers because she couldn't reach the bathroom.
Her mother has been overwhelmed. Saqr is in excruciating pain and screams in her sleep.
"My
burden is heavy," said her 36-year-old mother, Soumah Abu Shanab. "Now I
must feed her, bathe her and change her diapers." She spoke as three
visiting nurses changed Saqr's dressings. Saqr clutched a box of
medicine. Just holding it distracts her from the pain.
Much
of the world's attention has focused on the Palestinian death toll in
the Gaza war, with more than 1,900 killed, including at least 450
children, Palestinian health officials say. But a longer-term trauma may
be the large number of wounded - more than 9,800, mostly civilians,
including at least 3,000 children, officials say.
The
dead have been quickly and often unceremoniously buried even as
fighting raged. The wounded are a living reminder of the ravages of war.
Their numbers have overwhelmed Gaza's medical system, already
dilapidated after seven years of blockade on the tiny territory by
Israel and Egypt, as well as the diversion of resources to build up
Hamas' military capabilities.
Gaza's 25
hospitals have a total of 2,047 beds, or 1.3 beds per 1,000 people,
among the lowest ratios in the world, according to United Nations
figures. Nearly a third of the hospitals have been damaged in the
fighting, according to UNRWA, the U.N. agency that looks after
Palestinian refugees.
The thousands discharged
- many with severe wounds patched together temporarily - are then left
to the care of already devastated families who are grieving for dead
loved ones and struggling to get by in the devastation of the war.
Some
of the wounded return not to home but to U.N.-run schools packed with
displaced people. Some crowd into the houses of extended families along
with other relatives with nowhere else to go. Most homes are without
electricity or running water.
Around 250,000
of Gaza's 1.8 million residents have been displaced, while some 65,000
lost their home in the fighting, according to U.N. figures.
In
the crowded households, the wounded become a center of attention as
relatives try to provide small comforts. Most are immobile, or can move
very little. Families often put the wounded's mattress or bed by a
window to get air in stifling rooms amid the power outages.
Though
nurses can sometimes visit homes, many wounded have to make daily trips
back to the hospital for treatment, risking complications from the
exertions of the trip and the summer heat.
"Some
of them don't have the basic needs of life at home," Dr. Sobhi Skaek,
head of surgery at Shifa Hospital, told The Associated Press. "We have a
serious problem."
Neighbors have lent a
helping hand, but it is a drop in the ocean. Egypt took 220 wounded from
Gaza, the West Bank 29, Jordan 43, and Israel arranged for 87 to be
admitted to hospitals in east Jerusalem.
The
large number of wounded speaks to the ferocity of Israeli shelling -
nearly 5,000 strikes since the war began on July 8, according to the
Israeli military.
Israel says its campaign
aims to stop rocket fire into Israel by Gaza militants and that it
targets sites of rocket launchers and militants' command and control,
which were tightly interwoven with the population. Israel says it does
its utmost to avoid hitting civilians, warning them to leave areas about
to be attacked.
But repeatedly during the
war, entire families have been devastated by strikes, killing multiple
members at once and leaving others torn by shrapnel, burned or crushed
in rubble.
This week in Shifa Hospital,
10-year-old Abdul-Qader Sahweel grimaced in pain and clenched back tears
as medics changed the dressings on his wounds. He has to be brought
back and forth to the hospital every day for the treatment.
The
boy was sleeping with his family in a classroom in a U.N.-run school
when three Israel artillery shells hit the building on July 30. His
eldest brother died instantly - decapitated in the blast, his mother
says. Another brother is in a coma in an Israeli hospital. His mother,
Yasmeen, and 4-year-old brother were lightly wounded.
Abdul-Qader was sprayed by shrapnel in his chest, right eye and leg.
The
daily trips to the hospital - plus visits every three days to an eye
clinic - cost about $10 each, a considerable expense, said his father,
Mohammed Sahweel, who is unemployed like around 50 percent of Gaza's
population.
After the hospital's visit
Wednesday, the boy and his father returned to the home of relatives
where his family is now staying. Exhausted and uncomfortable,
Abdul-Qader said he has recurring headaches, a high temperature and
can't sleep. His right eye was red and swollen.
His family is worried about long term damage - his vision in the eye is severely impaired.
"Before
the war began, I was enjoying my summer holiday. I went to the park,
played football and went to the beach," the boy said. "Now I cannot do
any of that."
Fahd Abu Sultan, a 25-year-old
laborer, paid dearly for an act of courage on July 16. He rushed to help
when an Israeli navy boat shelled a group of boys playing soccer on a
Gaza beach, killing one and wounding others. As Sultan tried to carry
away the wounded, the shelling resumed, killing three others.
Abu
Sultan has five gaping shrapnel wounds. He lay on a sofa in his home
while male nurses changed the dressing, causing him so much pain he had
to pause as he described how the rocket hit only meters (yards) away
from him.
"I kept on screaming to the
ambulance people to come to rescue me but no one heard me," he recalled.
"I was the last one to be taken to hospital."
Bahaa
Eilewah, 16, was trying to help the injured in the Gaza district of
Shijayiah on July 30 when he himself was hit by shrapnel. Both his legs
were broken and are now in casts. He may not be able to walk unaided
again for a year.
He thinks about how he used to play table tennis at a mosque recreation center.
"Now I don't know when I will do that again."
