GAZA, Palestine
The bodies of three children lie on a steel tray inside what appears to be a Gaza hospital morgue, one leg of their trousers pushed up to reveal writing in black ink on their skin.
“We received some cases where
the parents wrote the names of their children on the legs and abdomen,” Dr.
Abdul Rahman Al Masri, the head of the emergency department Al-Aqsa Martyrs
Hospital, told CNN.
He said parents were worried
that “anything could happen,” and no one would be able to identify their
children.
“This means that they feel
they are targeted at any moment and can be injured or martyred,” Al Masri
added.
The black ink is a small sign
of the fear and desperation felt by parents in the densely populated enclave
as Israel continues to pound it with relentless airstrikes in
retaliation for the October 7 Hamas attacks.
The supervisor of the room at
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital where dead bodies are washed described Sunday as “an
exceptional day.”
Declining to be named, he told
CNN that the number of dead overnight from Saturday into Sunday had exceeded
200, and echoed what Dr. Al Masri had said.
“What we noticed today is that
many parents writing the names of their children on their legs so they can get
identified after airstrikes and if they get lost. This is a new phenomenon that
just started in Gaza.”
“Many of the children are
missing, many get here with their skulls broken … and it’s impossible to
identify them, only though that writing do they get identified.”
Over the last two weeks
hundreds of children have been pulled from the wreckage of pancaked buildings
hit by airstrikes in what is one of the most densely populated places in the
world, many of them made unrecognizable by their injuries.
With Israel continuing its
“complete siege” of the impoverished territory and crucial supplies running
dangerously low, doctors in Gaza hospitals have been forced to operate without
painkillers, according to Doctors Without Borders.
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