{"id":24879,"date":"2023-11-15T16:38:05","date_gmt":"2023-11-15T16:38:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/bombarded-twice-in-gaza-4-year-old-ahmed-loses-parents-then-legs\/"},"modified":"2023-11-15T16:38:05","modified_gmt":"2023-11-15T16:38:05","slug":"bombarded-twice-in-gaza-4-year-old-ahmed-loses-parents-then-legs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/bombarded-twice-in-gaza-4-year-old-ahmed-loses-parents-then-legs\/","title":{"rendered":"Bombarded twice in Gaza, 4-year-old Ahmed loses parents, then legs"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The only other survivor from his family is his two-year-old brother.<\/p>\n
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The boy keeps asking for his parents, and he wants to get up and walk, but his parents are dead and his legs have been amputated.<\/p>\n
That is the plight of Ahmed Shabat, a four-year-old boy whose parents were killed when their home in the town of Beit Hanoun in the northeastern corner of the Gaza Strip was hit by an Israeli air strike.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe child asks every day. \u2019Where is my father? Where is my mother? Every single day. But we try very hard to make him forget, and adjust to the situation he is currently in,\u201d said Ahmed\u2019s uncle, Ibrahim Abu Amsha, who has become his guardian.<\/p>\n
Palestinian boy Ahmad Shabat is looked after by his uncle, at Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital \u2014 Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
Abu Amsha said the force of the blast threw the boy into a neighbouring house and killed 17 family members in total. The only other survivor was Ahmed\u2019s two-year-old brother.<\/p>\n
More than 52,000 people lived in Beit Hanoun before the war. There is barely a single inhabitable building still standing there, according to a report in the Israeli newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth<\/em> by veteran Israeli reporter Nahum Barnea, who was taken to see it by the Israeli military on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Abu Amsha said he and other extended family members took in the two little boys at their home in Nuseirat refugee camp, in a different part of the strip, south of Gaza City, only for it to be hit by another Israeli strike.<\/p>\n
Both of Ahmed\u2019s legs were catastrophically injured. With the boy\u2019s life in danger, he was taken to Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, a town further south, where orthopaedic surgeon Dr Ahmed Zayyan took him into his care.<\/p>\n
Palestinian boy Ahmad Shabat receives medical attention at Shuhada al-Aqsa hospital \u2014 Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe received this child with newly sustained injuries. He had severed lower limbs,\u201d the doctor said at the hospital, speaking on Saturday as preparations were underway for him to operate on Ahmed.<\/p>\n
Dr Zayyan said the hospital was overwhelmed with other gravely wounded patients, and Ahmed\u2019s surgery would take place not in a proper operating theatre but in a room normally used for births.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to carry out lower limb amputation due to severe lower limb lacerations, to the right leg. The amputation is above the knee. Same for the left leg,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n