Gaza’s kids caught in the crossfire of Israel-hamas war
GAZA CITY: Suzy Ishkontana hardly speaks or eats. It’s been two days since the seven-yearold girl was pulled from the rubble of what was once her family’s home, destroyed amid a barrage of Israeli airstrikes. She spent hours buried in the wreckage as her siblings and mother died around her.
Children are being subjected to extensive trauma in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip. For some, it’s trauma they’ve seen repeatedly throughout their short lives.
This is the fourth time in 12 years Israel and Gaza’s Hamas rulers have gone to war. Each time, Israel has unleashed heavy airstrikes at the densely populated Gaza Strip as it vows to stop Hamas rocket barrages launched towards Israel.
Videos on social media from Gaza have shown the grief of survivors from families wiped out in an instant. “They were four! Where are they? Four!” wailed one father outside a hospital after learning all four of his children had been killed. Another showed a young boy screaming “Baba”, as he ran to the front of the funeral procession where men were carrying his father’s body to burial.
The Ishkontana family was buried under the rubble of their home early on Sunday, after massive bombing raids of downtown Gaza City that Israel said were targeting a Hamas tunnel network.
Riad Ishkontana recounted how he was buried for five hours under the wreckage, pinned under a chunk of concrete, unable to reach his wife and five children. “I was listening to their voices beneath the rubble. I heard Dana and Zain calling, Dad! Dad!’ before their voices faded and then I realised they had died,” he said, referring to two of his children.
After he was rescued and taken to the hospital, he said, family and staff hid the truth from him as long as they could. “I learned about their deaths one after another,” he said. Finally, Suzy was brought in alive, the second-oldest of his three daughters and two sons, and the only survivor.
The Norwegian Refugee Council said that 11 of the children killed so far in this war had been going through its psychosocial programmes.