Palestinian children scream as their limbs are amputated without anaesthesia

Empowering Weak & Oppressed

Crescent International

Jumada' al-Akhirah 15, 1445 2023-12-28

Daily News Analysis

by Crescent International

More than 21,000 civilians have been killed in Gaza by the zionist war criminals since October 7.

They can be considered lucky.

After all, their suffering is over even if they have left behind grieving relatives.

Among the dead are more than 8,000 children.

And there are at least 7,000 Palestinians, many of them women and children, buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

There is no heavy equipment to lift the huge concrete slabs to find out if any are still alive.

There is another aspect of their suffering that needs to be told.

Under relentless Israeli bombardment, many children have suffered horrific injuries.

These range from deep wounds to their bodies to badly smashed limbs that have to be amputated.

With few hospitals functioning in Gaza because Israel has bombed virtually all of them, there is desperate shortage of medicines and even electricity.

The case of children with smashed limbs is extremely painful.

There is no anaesthesia in the few hospitals that are still functioning.

Children’s limbs have to be amputated without anaesthesia.

Some 1,000 children have had their limbs amputated without anaesthesia in Gaza since October 7, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has said.

One can imagine the pain these children must have endured and continue to endure.

They have suffered triple pain: loss of parents in Israeli bombings, personal injury, some of which especially to the limbs are so severe that they have to be amputated.

And finally, because of the Israeli destruction of most hospitals and total siege of Gaza, amputations take place without anaesthesia.

The screams of children being held down while surgeons amputate their limbs is unbearable for most people.

Naturally, young children cry for their parents under such circumstance but they are already dead.

Their relatives try to distract them.

Take the case of four-year-old Ahmed.

His family home was bombed twice.

He lost both his parents.

He was badly injured and both his legs had to be amputated.

He constantly cries for his mother and father.

His uncle, who has now become his guardian, tries to distract him and make him forget about his parents.

How could a four-year-old child forget his parents?

At this tender age, they are his entire world.

Gaza’s doctors continue their struggle in these most trying circumstances.

Nurse Abu Emad Hassanein recalled how he stitched up the head wound of a little girl without anaesthesia in Al-Shifa Hospital as she screamed “Mummy, Mummy”.

He described this as one of the worst moments of his career.

The case of a Gaza doctor is even more painful.

He had to amputate his child’s legs without anaesthesia.

After the amputation, the child died of pain as his father watched helplessly.

The zionist war criminals are directly responsible for these barbaric acts.

They are amply supplied by the US that has provided these savages with military weapons to continue the genocide of the civilian population of Gaza.

The Ministry of Health in Gaza says that nearly 70 per cent of casualties are children and women.

The death toll has surpassed 21,000. The actual figure is much higher.

Nearly 55,000 people have been injured, according to Health Ministry spokesman Ashraf Al-Qudra.

There is also acute shortage of food, clean drinking water and other essential commodities of life.