'No stability' The struggle to support children left orphaned and wounded

Within a few months, the war in Gaza had made its own addition to the vocabulary of emergency medical assistance with the world’s most heartbreaking acronym: WCNSF, “wounded child, no surviving family”.

- Julian Borger Seham Tantesh Gaza

Three-month-old Rim, the sole survivor of an attack on her home in Khan Younis, has been taken in by her aunt

(MAHMOUD BASSAM/ANADOLU/GETTY)

Over two years of bombardment and famine the problem has worsened, even though in the constant chaos created by Israeli bombing and evacuation orders, it is hard to keep track of children separated from their families.

Unicef cites Gaza health ministry statistics from early September, recording 2,596 children who had lost both parents, and a further 53,724 who had lost either their father (47,804) or mother (5,920).

There is no data on how many parentless children have also been wounded, but Gaza has the highest rate of child amputations of any modern conflict.

On 13 August, a three-year-old girl, Wesam, was asleep with her five-year-old brother, Zuheir, her pregnant mother, Nour, her father, Moatassem, and her grandparents when the family house in Gaza City was bombed. Wesam was the only survivor, but sustained serious wounds to her leg and abdomen, a lacerated liver and kidney, and severe psychological trauma.

Unicef said she was in “urgent need of medical evacuation abroad for advanced treatment, particularly to save her left leg”.

The Israeli onslaught on Gaza has left thousands of children like Wesam in its wake - alone and often critically wounded. There are so many such children that overworked trauma surgeons simply scrawl WCNSF on their files.