Boy, two, ‘doesn’t know he can’t walk, he thinks it’s because of the stitches’

Two-year-old Moath has not come to terms with his new reality. At an age when he should be learning to run, he has lost the ability to walk, after an Israeli strike left him paralysed from the waist down.

His mother, Sabreen Fauzi Abbas, is beside herself. In one moment, her son’s entire life changed.

“Moath was on the roof of the building we were seeking refuge in because he needed to use the bathroom. Then the house next door was hit,” she said, as her son lay behind her on a bed in Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, in central Gaza.

Shrapnel struck Moath’s chest and severed his spinal cord. The little boy does not understand the extent of what has happened to him.

“All he did was cry at first. He just wanted to sleep and cry 24 hours a day,” said Ms Fauzi Abbas. “He doesn’t know that he can’t walk. He thinks it’s because of the stitches. We try to answer his questions but he still can’t believe that he is unable to walk again.”

Ms Fauzi Abbas is now trying to get Moath transferred for treatment abroad.

“We thought that due to his young age, he’d get accepted quickly, but it’s been two weeks and we haven’t heard anything yet,” she said.

The UN says more than 1,000 children have had leg amputations since the war began on October 7, but the actual number is thought to be higher.

Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital is the only one still functioning in central Gaza.

It receives many more patients than it can treat, as resources run out and medical staff struggle to cope.

In the same facility, Asmaa Al Astal, 32, wears a prayer dress that hides her 70 wounds and leg amputation. She was injured 52 days ago, and was initially treated at the European Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza.

“I woke up at 12am in the intensive care unit of the European Hospital, where I stayed for 10 days. They needed to amputate, but couldn’t.”

Every day, doctors would say they would perform the amputation.

But the operation kept getting delayed due to the lack of operating theatres and high volume of casualties needing more urgent surgery.

“I was slowly dying,” Ms Al Astal said. Her husband managed to get her to Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Hospital, but by then, her condition had drastically worsened.

“I’ve never experienced pain stronger than that of an amputated leg,” she said tearfully.

“I am in pain constantly. Nothing has helped.”

She has applied to be treated abroad three times, she says, but been rejected each time.

Ms Al Astal’s nine-year-old daughter, whose leg was seriously damaged, has managed to get treatment abroad and is being cared for in Tunisia.

The child has had a plate put in her leg and is receiving physiotherapy, plus counselling for the trauma she endured.

“She keeps asking for me. She keeps dreaming that I walk through the door,” Ms Al Astal said, her voice breaking.

She says all she wants is to put on a prosthetic limb, so she can care for her children and feel like a mother again.

“I have four children. Who will take care of them?”

Ms Al Astal said her injury has made her feel like a child.

“I’m scared of being alone,” she said. “I’m scared of walking so I don’t fall.

“I tried to do it but I fell and it hurt more than I can describe. I can’t even go to the bathroom alone.”

Only 30 per cent of Gaza’s medics are still working, the World Health Organisation has said.

The rest were killed in strikes, detained or displaced.

More than 1,000 children have had leg amputations since the war began on October 7, the UN says