The sound of a violent explosion shook the area inhabited by the family of the child, Saja Junaid, in the northern Gaza Strip. It was accompanied by a fire belt near their house, which terrified them. This was while eating suhoor on the first day of Ramadan.
Four-year-old Saja had her share of anguish from the war-torn Gaza, for the missiles had burned her entire body as a result of this raid. Her features of innocence and childhood disappeared, and her laughter that used to fill the house disappeared.
Saja was sleeping at the time, the found herself on the hospital bed with a burned body and unbearable pain. The missile fire had broken out in the room where she was sleeping in.
The father tried to save his daughter, but upon reaching her room, he found that the fire had consumed everything, including his daughter’s beauty, and thought that she had died at the time. The ambulance and civil defense arrived, and the father was surprised that she was still alive.
The pain in Saja’s life was not that she suffered burns and had her face disfigured, but rather that she was besieged in Al-Shifa Hospital while receiving treatment inside, thus
adding more chapters of agony into Saja’s story.
A shortage in treatment, screaming in intense pain and lack of medicine, a family grieving over their daughter, tanks besieging the hospital, starvation for two months and no food reaching the hospital...a fading childhood.
This is Saja's situation...just one of the stories of Gaza's children!!