'We pray for a visa' Injured Palestinian children left in limbo

Mariam Sabbah had been asleep under a blanket with her siblings when an Israeli missile tore through her home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of 1 March.

- Thaslima Begum

The missile narrowly missed the sleeping children but as the terrified nine-year-old ran to her parents, a second one hit.

"I saw her coming towards me but suddenly there was another explosion and she vanished into the smoke," says Mariam's mother, Fatma Salman.

As the parents searched desperately for their children, they found Mariam lying unconscious in a pool of blood; her left arm was ripped off, shards of shrapnel had pierced through her small body and she was bleeding heavily from her abdomen.

As well as losing her arm, the blast left Mariam with severe abdominal and pelvic injuries from shrapnel tearing through her bladder, uterus and bowel.

"Mariam needs specialised paediatric reconstructive surgery," says Dr Mohammed Tahir, a British surgeon who treated Mariam while volunteering at al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza. "Her arm amputation is also very high and requires limb lengthening and specialist prosthesis. Without this, it will be very difficult for her to live a normal life."

Mariam is one of tens of thousands of people in Gaza who have been injured and disfigured by Israeli military attacks over the past 23 months, which have also killed more than 64,000 people, mainly women and children.

Repeated military strikes and attacks on Gaza's hospitals and Israel's blockade of basic goods and supplies into the territory have left the health sector devastated and doctors without the means to treat the sick, injured and famished.

Since October 2023, 7,672 patients, including 5,332 children, have been medically evacuated from Gaza for urgent treatment abroad, but trying to get a medical evacuation organised and approved is a slow, arduous and heavily vetted process.