Gaza Herald – Under the weight of the ongoing devastation, amputated limbs have become numbers in hospital records, and children are often referred to by what they have lost from their bodies. Yet behind every number is a life shattered and a childhood stolen in an instant.
One of those stories belongs to Noor Faraj (10 years old), who woke up from beneath the rubble to find herself without both legs and one arm.
She Used to Run After Games
Lying on her hospital bed at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, Noor stares into the distance, her eyes still searching for an explanation of what happened. Before the attack, she was a lively child who loved playing hopscotch, running around, and trying to enjoy the few moments of childhood she could find amid the war.
But an Israeli missile struck her family, turning that childhood into a long journey of pain.
Noor lost both of her legs above the knees and her right arm, while shrapnel became embedded in different parts of her small body. She awoke to a new reality she could never have imagined.
A Family Bleeding
The tragedy did not stop with Noor.
Her mother, Rabab, suffered severe injuries and extensive burns across her body, while her brother Muadh (14) was killed in the same strike.
Meanwhile, her younger brother Yahya (3) faces the risk of losing his foot as his condition worsens and the medical resources needed to save it remain unavailable.
Amid this devastation, their father stands helpless before the catastrophe that has struck his family.
“I look at my children and my wife and I don’t know whom to help first,” he says. “Everyone needs treatment, and there is no way to get it under the bombardment and siege.”
He continues: “The light of my heart has gone out, and life no longer has meaning. I don’t know how many times we must appeal to the world to look at our situation, or how much more we must lose before this nightmare ends.”
A Photograph Carrying One Last Hope
Whenever a journalist enters the hospital, Noor watches silently.
She follows the cameras with eyes full of hope, as though every photograph might become another chance for survival.
The young girl says:
“Maybe one of these pictures will reach an official somewhere in the world. I am a child who lost my legs and my arm, and I need a chance to receive treatment outside Gaza.”
Despite everything she has lost, Noor’s greatest fear remains for her younger brother Yahya. She worries that he may suffer the same fate.
Amputation, once considered a rare and tragic exception, has become a familiar sight in a territory exhausted by war.
A Simple Dream
Before the war, Noor’s dream was to win at hopscotch with her friends.
Today, her dreams have been reduced to a single wish: to receive prosthetic limbs that will help her stand again and regain a small part of the life that war has taken from her.
