Little Palestinian girl with head injury fighting for life under difficult conditions

By Muhammed Emin Canik and Mahmut Geldi

ISTANBUL (AA) – Little Palestinian girl Sila Husu with a skull fracture sustained in an Israeli attack in the Gaza Strip is struggling to survive under difficult conditions.

Sila, 7, was injured in the Israeli airstrike on Khadija School in Deir al-Balah in central Gaza Strip on July 27.

“They forced us to leave Khadija School to bomb the area. My mother, my siblings and I were displaced and we could not escape the shrapnel,” Sila told Anadolu.

Sila, who was brought to the Shuhada al-Aqsa Hospital by ambulance, said: "My head hurts and I feel my heart break."

Her right eye was also damaged in the attack, and she can see a little with her left eye.

- 'I want to be a doctor'

Sharing her future goal and dream, Sila said: "I want to be a doctor when I grow up, and I want to treat little children."

“My message to the children of the world is; I love them very, very much,” she added.

Sila's mother said her family of eight was forcibly displaced from the Gaza City in the early hours of Oct. 7 and they came to Deir el-Balah.

They first moved to a place of their relatives and then took shelter in the Khadija School although it was not safe.

“The first attack happened while we were having breakfast,” she recalled, adding that while they were looking for a shelter, a shrapnel hit them.

“Sila had fallen to the ground, and I was looking around for someone to pick her up and some young people came and took her to the hospital,” she added.

Sila needs treatment that requires plastic surgery, the mother said, adding that a platinum support was placed between her eyebrows.

- 'My children have not seen their father for about a year'

Calling for help for her daughter's treatment, she said: "As a Palestinian mother, I am exhausted and I constantly pray for a benefactor to undertake the treatment of my daughter."

“My children have not seen their father for about a year. Yesterday, Sila kept crying and saying I want my father. Her father could not leave Gaza City,” she added.

Flouting a UN Security Council resolution demanding an immediate cease-fire, Israel has faced international condemnation amid its continued brutal offensive on Gaza since an Oct. 7 attack last year by the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

Nearly 40,000 Palestinians have since been killed in Gaza, most of them women and children, and over 92,000 others injured, according to local health authorities.

More than ten months into the Israeli war, vast tracts of Gaza lie in ruins amid a crippling blockade of food, clean water, and medicine.

Israel is accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice, whose latest ruling ordered it to immediately halt its military operation in the southern city of Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians had sought refuge from the war before it was invaded on May 6.

*Writing by Gozde Bayar