In shattered Gaza, mother spares child from seeing her head wounds

Seven-year-old Sila Houso’s mother will not let the girl see her own shrapnel wounds after an Israeli strike that disfigured her head, fractured her forehead and detached a retina.

Sila and her family were sheltering in a school when it was bombed on July 27. Without the option of travelling abroad for treatment, life is confined to one of the few hospitals still functioning in war-ravaged Gaza.

When Sila asks her mother about her health, Um Sila tells the child she is beautiful. She is one of more than 92,000 Palestinians whom Gaza health authorities say have been wounded in the more than 10-month Israeli offensive.

"I don't want to tell her about her situation now, I don't let her see anything because she's pretty and God-willing these are minor injuries that can go," said the mother.

"I wish she could leave the country and go abroad to get treated like other children have gone, and return to her normal situation and possibly better so she can live her life in a normal way."

The strike that hurt the child, which Israel said targeted Hamas using the compound, killed at least 30 Palestinians with 15 children and eight women among the dead, and wounded over 100 people, according to the Gaza media office.

Sense of humour gone

Before the war, Sila was outgoing and active with a smile and sense of humour that helped her siblings, her mother said.

Now she is different – and terrified of schools. “She tells me she doesn't want to go to any school,” her mother said.

Israel says it goes to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties. It has attacked several schools, saying Hamas and commanders operated from them and used civilians as human shields, an allegation the group denies.

The UN Human Rights Office has recorded at least 21 attacks on schools in Gaza since July 4 of this year. Yet Sila still wants to help other children like the exhausted doctor treating patients at her hospital.

Her ambition is "to get treated and to be a doctor, so I can treat sick young children," she said.