More than 3,350 people in Gaza have experienced major burns. Nine-year-old Elham Abu Hajjaj is among them.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n The last thing Elham Abu Hajjaj remembers from the Israeli bombing of her Gaza City home is that her mother held her and prayed.<\/p>\n When Hajjaj woke up, she found herself in a hospital with a machine on her stomach and her \u201cwhole body trembling,\u201d Abu Hajjaj told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cI touched my body and it was all burned,\u201d she said. \u201cA doctor was speaking to me, and I asked him where my father and mother were. He didn\u2019t answer me.\u201d<\/p>\n The Israeli attack in Gaza City\u2019s al-Saffaweh area had killed both her parents and left Abu Hajjaj \u2013 who is nine years old \u2013 with third-degree burns.<\/p>\n She is not alone in the horrific fallout from Israel\u2019s genocidal war on Gaza. Nearly 42,000 people \u2013 about 2 percent of Gaza\u2019s population \u2013 have received \u201clife-changing\u201d injuries, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated in September. As many as a quarter of them are children.<\/p>\n More than 3,350 people have experienced major burns, making them among the most common injuries the WHO has recorded. Children are \u201cclearly disproportionately affected\u201d, the organisation added. About 70 percent of people receiving burn surgery in Gaza were children, mostly aged under five, and many were burned during bomb blasts.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I look in the mirror, I say to myself: \u2018Oh God, look at these wounds, they are very bad wounds,’\u201d Abu Hajjaj said, scrolling through photos of heavy scarring on her neck, her arm and her leg. \u201cI have wounds here and here, and on my hand as well.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, she found it difficult to imagine the loss of her parents. Even when her grandfather explained that they were waiting for her in paradise, Abu Hajjaj said, she kept telling herself they must be alive.<\/p>\n \u201cI finally understood they were not when my grandfather took me to live with him,\u201d she said. \u201cThen I realised that my father and mother had died and I started crying.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 39,000 children in Gaza have lost one or both of their parents, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said in April, about 17,000 of whom have been parentless since Israel started its war on Gaza in October 2023.<\/p>\n Abu Hajjaj now lives with her grandparents and other relatives who survived, including her brother.<\/p>\n Speaking from outside the family home \u2013 surrounded by rubble from destruction to the neighbourhood \u2013 she said she felt \u201csome joy\u201d when she realised her brother was still alive.<\/p>\n \u201cI also found my grandmother, my aunt and my grandfather. They are by my side,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen we met and I saw my brother, I felt a little happy, but my heart was sad for my father and mother who passed away.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, the little girl has turned to drawing to express her feelings about the loss of her parents and childhood home.<\/p>\n \u201cIt helps me forget everything that happened,\u201d she said. \u201cThe last drawing I did was of the house that was destroyed.\u201d<\/p>\n She did not draw her home in its final state, however.<\/p>\n \u201cI rebuilt it in the picture, and I put in a swing and a tree,\u201d Abu Hajjaj said. \u201cI drew the tree because my father had planted a tree.\u201d<\/p>\n More than 3,350 people in Gaza have experienced major burns. Nine-year-old Elham Abu Hajjaj is among them. The last thing Elham Abu Hajjaj remembers from the Israeli bombing of her Gaza City home is that her mother held her and prayed. When Hajjaj woke up, she found herself in a hospital with a machine on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2754,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle-east-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
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