Kids' long wait for urgent treatment

Making gestures with his fingers, breathing hard with tubes placed into his neck and chest, Mohamed Badran repeated the same questions every five minutes: "Why can't I see anything? Where is my father?"

No one understands what Mohamed Badran, an 8-year-old Gaza boy, wants except his mother, who keeps trying to calm him down while being unable to answer his questions. The boy was hit by fragments of an Israeli missile that struck the family house at the Nuseirat refugee camp in the central Gaza Strip.

Yousef al-Reesh, deputy minister of health in Gaza, said that Mohamed was in critical condition and he would probably lose his sight completely.

"The fragments of the missile badly damaged Mohamed's face, his head and his neck. He can hardly talk and he is unable to communicate with the others. Only his mother can understand what he needs or what he wants," Reesh said.

Mohamed wasn't the only one who was injured in the Israeli airstrike on his house. His six brothers were also injured, and three are still in critical condition.

"All our children were injured in the airstrike on our house. My husband, Nidal, and I were not injured, but our hearts are broken after our children were badly hurt," said the mother, trying to hold back her tears. "But after a few days, my husband was killed in another airstrike on a mosque in our area."

She said that she was under heavy stress after her husband was killed, leaving her alone with their wounded children. "I really don't know what to do with my wounded children, with three of them still in critical condition."

Mohamed still didn't know that the Israeli airstrike took his father. He only knew that his brothers were injured and that he will probably lose his sight.

After intensive efforts, the 39-year-old mother managed to transfer four of her badly wounded children to an Israeli hospital and another Hospital in Jerusalem.

She said, "They (Israelis) didn't let me go with my children and only gave permission to my children's aunt. Why are they treating me so badly like that?"

According to Israeli security instructions, those who are allowed to travel from Gaza to Israel must be under 16 years old and over 40 years old.

"The Israelis didn't allow anyone from our family to go with the children who is younger than 40 years old to stay with children there."

In the Gaza Strip, some 3,000 wounded children are being treated in hospital, many of whom are still waiting to be transferred to hospitals in Israel and abroad.

Beside the wounded children, there are women, elderly and adults who also need urgent medical treatment abroad.

On July 8, Israel waged a large-scale military air and ground offensive on the Gaza Strip, killing 1,957 and wounding more than 10,000 others.

On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers and three civilians, including a foreign national, were also killed.

(China Daily 08/15/2014 page11)