Fearful Gazan parents write names on their children's bodies

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.

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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.