Key Points
- Tawfiq Abu Youssef was hit in the head with shrapnel during an Israeli attack on the Nuseirat refugee camp.
- His father Raed thought he was dead, and had started digging a grave for his four-year-old son.
- The boy, who is recovering in hospital, was among 700 people injured in the bombardment.
Raed Abu Youssef has lost three children in the past two years, and over the weekend, he thought his only remaining child had died.
, Youssef was told his four-year-old son Tawfiq had been killed.
The devastated father was digging a grave for the boy when he found out he had survived, and the child was carried to hospital, where he now remains.
Youssef said Tawfiq was sitting on his mother’s lap when shrapnel from an airstrike stuck his head.
Some 700 people are believed to have been injured in Israel’s bombardment of the Nuseirat refugee camp. Source: AAP / Jehad Alshrafi/AP
“Nobody was expecting this. What did the children do?” he said.
“All of those who were killed yesterday are children and women.”
Tawfiq is the only surviving child his father has, after one died from cancer and two were killed in the Hamas-Israel war.
His injuries threaten his life and will certainly change it, according to surgeon Omar Abu Taqia.
“It’s good we were able to save his life but we can’t do more. He would definitely need closer follow-up,” Taqia said.
“He definitely needs to travel because the resources are limited.”
Why did Israel attack Nuseirat refugee camp?
On Saturday, Israel bombarded the refugee camp in what the Palestinian foreign ministry has described as a massacre.
Israel’s military said it had conducted a complex operation in the densely populated camp to rescue four hostages being held captive by Hamas militants.
Some 274 Palestinians were killed and 700 injured in the hostage rescue raid, Gaza medics said.
Israel’s military said a special forces officer was killed in exchanges of fire with militants emerging from cover in residential blocks, and that it knew of “under 100” Palestinians killed.
Gaza hospitals overwhelmed
Eight months into Israel’s campaign against Hamas, Gaza’s hospitals are damaged, under-equipped and understaffed.
The collapse in Gaza’s health system in the face of massive Israeli bombardment has complicated a host of other unfolding disasters, from a hunger crisis to spreading disease.
It has also left those with chronic conditions unable to access basic care.
The war has also brought sudden influxes of badly injured people to the few remaining hospitals even as they struggle to access medical supplies, overwhelming doctors and nurses coping with restricted space and terrible injuries.
In Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip, there are not even enough stands to hold up IV drips.
Doctor Khalil al-Dakran said there were four or five times more injured people at the hospital than there were beds for them to use.
“We placed the injured along the internal corridors and in between beds,” he said.
“There is no room at all inside this hospital for the injured. We had them sleep in external tents.”
The war between Hamas and Israel is the latest escalation in a long-standing conflict.
More than 1,200 people were killed and over 250 taken hostage by Hamas on 7 October, according to Israeli tallies.
Israel’s retaliatory air, ground and sea assault on Gaza has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians, according to health authorities in Gaza.
