Muhammad Hijazi flows while his father opens a bandage for him. He cries and kicked his feet, but his father is able to put the bandage ultimately on his eye.
“Nothing,” Abu Muhammad told his child, in a recent attempt to calm him down. But the boy is unbearable.
The seven -year -old was playing outside the family home in April with his cousins in Gabalia, northern Gaza, where his family was a shelter, when the children encountered an unbeatable bomb.
Abu Muhammad said: “He exploded in front of him.” “We went and found (he) full of blood.”
The child was transferred to a nearby hospital to treat his injuries and then transferred him to a hospital in central Gaza with the ophthalmology department, which could perform the surgery he needs. His right eye was removed. His father said he could lose the left as well.
Attractive children to shiny things
There is no shortage of dangers in Gaza for children like Muhammad, from air strikes to diseases and malnutrition to shootings that have become regular in the aid distribution sites. However, the risks posed by the insecure bombs, mines, perforated traps and other ammunition that were left throughout Gaza in particular.
“They are different, they are literally,” said Luke Erfing, head of the United Nations Business Program in the occupied territories. “The child will be attracted immediately.”
Muhammad Hijazi was playing with his cousins near an unexploited bomb in Gabalia when he had a sight.
According to the Hamas government media office in Gaza, there may be up to 6800 tons of uninterrupted munitions Published throughout Gaza. This depends on the United Nations You can be about five to 10 percent Of all the weapons fired in the region, they failed to bomb.
Irfing said there were 222 confirmed incidents related to uninterrupted ammunition since Israel began bombing Gaza in the aftermath of October 7, 2023, an attack led by Hamas, which killed about 1,200 people and saw another 250 people.
Irfing said there are hundreds of these other meetings, but such incidents are not always counted officially. He said that with a large part of the medical infrastructure in the event of ruin, the doctors in Gaza are busy trying to stabilize patients instead of assessing the cause of their injuries or deaths.
Unfortunately munitions meetings are not always fatal, but they can leave people with catastrophic wounds and lifelong disabilities that are a challenge to manage a war zone with a tangible health care system.
Just 17 of the 36 part Hospitals They were partially considered, and more than 1,000 health care workers have been killed from December 2024, according to doctors without borders.
“Time launcher”
In the case of Muhammad, the doctors told him that his left eye may be able to save her, but he must be medically evacuated outside Gaza to perform surgery. Until then, his father holds his hand and directs every step for him, while he is used to re -learn the simple movements and tasks he had done without thinking.
“As a father, it is very difficult to see Hamoud (likely) losing both his eyes and does not live his normal life.” “I see his cousins play, and Hamoud will not play with them. It is very difficult for me.”
Usually, the operations that calm down from the uninterrupted munitions cannot enter until the war in Gaza ends, as the fighting between Hamas and Israel continues and turns into different parts of the pocket and people are frequently displaced and return to the areas that have been bombed strongly, the ammunition is still a continuous sermon.
It is not easy to locate. The war did not only demand the life of an estimated 54,000 Palestinians; I left almost 70 percent Among the pocket structures that were destroyed or damaged, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Irfing said hundreds of “esteemed bombs” said.
“Because it was launched and its effective launch mechanism is ready for an explosion, it is designed either to strike something, or there is temporarily, and it will explode,” he said. “They are not designer to sit there, and they have not been defined, and this is the danger.”
The United Nations working service last year is estimated It may take 14 years to clean up Gaza of Uxo.
“No dreams left”
Before the war, Muhammad was in the kindergarten, at the top of his chapter, his father said. He ascended a picture of the child who took eight or nine months before the accident. At that time, the family was displaced to southern Gaza due to the fighting in the north. Mohamed wears black intermittent clothes and stands in front of the tent. He and his family were owned. He smiles great for the camera, which is a sparkle in his eyes.
When CBC met him, he was sitting in his home, which was partially destroyed in the war. He had clear wounds of the explosion. It was wrapped in the gauze. His remaining eye with tears.
His father said that Muhammad always wanted to study engineering. Initially, the accident only motivated; He told his father that when he recovered, he became an engineer so that he could help rebuild Gaza. But the possibility of losing his vision permanently has weakened this determination.
His father said, “This explosion destroyed dreams of Hamoud,” said his father. “And now, because he lost his eye and may lose the other, there are no remaining dreams.”
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