Kille Pler Angels

War zones are no place for children, the most vulnerable victims of armed conflicts who are sometimes forced to fight others' battles

- Shweta Desai

AS winter tightened its cold grip around the Deir al-Balah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip, aid workers, distributing what little warm clothing they could, stumbled upon a scene that seemed to be pulled from the darkest of nightmares. In a cramped corner, five-year-old Saad clung desperately to his mother's hand, his small body trembling from the sharp sting of head wounds and burn marks still raw from a recent bombing. "My eyes went to heaven before I did." the boy's words hung in the air.

In Beit Lahiya, north Gaza, nobody knows if 10-monthold Shama survived the bombing of Kamal Adwan Hospital in the last week of December. Her tiny body pierced by shrapnel was being treated in one of the last surviving Intensive Care Units there.

In another camp, 10-year-old Razan, gripped by frequent bouts of anxiety, shudders and cries at every loud sound. She lost her left leg. both parents and three siblings to an airstrike by Israeli warplanes on north Gaza. Razan is just one of nearly 17,000 Wounded Children with No Surviving Family (WCNSF)-unaccompanied or separated from their parents-among the 1.7 million displaced people in Gaza.