Gaza girl orphaned in Israeli strike rebuilds her life with severe burns

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More than 3,350 radical successful Gaza person experienced large burns. Nine-year-old Elham Abu Hajjaj is among them.

Published On 20 Nov 2025

The past happening Elham Abu Hajjaj remembers from the Israeli bombing of her Gaza City location is that her parent held her and prayed.

When Hajjaj woke up, she recovered herself successful a infirmary with a instrumentality connected her tummy and her “whole assemblage trembling,” Abu Hajjaj told Al Jazeera.

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“I touched my assemblage and it was each burned,” she said. “A doc was speaking to me, and I asked him wherever my begetter and parent were. He didn’t reply me.”

The Israeli onslaught successful Gaza City’s al-Saffaweh country had killed some her parents and near Abu Hajjaj – who is 9 years aged – with third-degree burns.

She is not unsocial successful the horrific fallout from Israel’s genocidal warfare connected Gaza. Nearly 42,000 radical – astir 2 percent of Gaza’s colonisation – person received “life-changing” injuries, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated successful September. As galore arsenic a 4th of them are children.

More than 3,350 radical person experienced large burns, making them among the astir communal injuries the WHO has recorded. Children are “clearly disproportionately affected”, the organisation added. About 70 percent of radical receiving pain country successful Gaza were children, mostly aged nether five, and galore were burned during weaponry blasts.

“When I look successful the mirror, I accidental to myself: ‘Oh God, look astatine these wounds, they are precise atrocious wounds,'” Abu Hajjaj said, scrolling done photos of dense scarring connected her neck, her limb and her leg. “I person wounds present and here, and connected my manus arsenic well.”

Still, she recovered it hard to ideate the nonaccomplishment of her parents. Even erstwhile her gramps explained that they were waiting for her successful paradise, Abu Hajjaj said, she kept telling herself they indispensable beryllium alive.

“I yet understood they were not erstwhile my gramps took maine to unrecorded with him,” she said. “Then I realised that my begetter and parent had died and I started crying.”

More than 39,000 children successful Gaza person lost 1 oregon both of their parents, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics said successful April, astir 17,000 of whom person been parentless since Israel started its warfare connected Gaza successful October 2023.

Abu Hajjaj present lives with her grandparents and different relatives who survived, including her brother.

Speaking from extracurricular the household location – surrounded by rubble from demolition to the neighbourhood – she said she felt “some joy” erstwhile she realised her member was inactive alive.

“I besides recovered my grandmother, my aunt and my grandfather. They are by my side,” she said. “When we met and I saw my brother, I felt a small happy, but my bosom was bittersweet for my begetter and parent who passed away.”

Now, the small miss has turned to drafting to explicit her feelings astir the nonaccomplishment of her parents and puerility home.

“It helps maine hide everything that happened,” she said. “The past drafting I did was of the location that was destroyed.”

She did not gully her location successful its last state, however.

“I rebuilt it successful the picture, and I enactment successful a plaything and a tree,” Abu Hajjaj said. “I drew the histrion due to the fact that my begetter had planted a tree.”