Many families in Gaza besieged by Israeli military forces write their children's names on their hands and palms to make them easier to find or identify after Israeli attacks.
Many Gazans fear they will not be able to recognize their children if they die in the attacks.
Hundreds of people were killed and injured in an Israeli attack on al-Ahli Baptist Hospital on October 17. Officials say it is often difficult to determine the identity of some of those killed in the attack.
This is why many residents write names on their children's palms so that they can be easily identified in case they are killed by Israeli attacks.
Ahmed Abu es-Seba, 35, who lives in the Shifa Medical Complex, has written his name on his palms, as well as the names of his children and relatives.
"We write our names on our palms, as well as the names of our children so that the bodies can be identified in case Israeli planes bomb us," said es-Seba.
He stressed that it is difficult to identify many people, especially children, who have been killed in Gaza.
Children in Palestine's besieged Gaza enclave are having their names written on their hands to facilitate the identification of their bodies in case they are killed in an Israeli attack pic.twitter.com/C33bhoT16N
— TRT World (@trtworld) October 20, 2023
"Israel does not differentiate and bombards everyone," said this Palestinian.
In Gaza hospitals, every hour for twenty days, staff have seen dozens of children rescued from the rubble. Their faces are covered in blood and dust. To urgently identify these newly transported victims, the city's busiest hospital now uses an acronym "WCNSF", "Wounded Child with No Surviving Family".
It should also be noted that the population in Gaza is one of the youngest in the world, with half of the population under the age of 18.
So of the 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, about 1.15 million are children or teenagers.
And the war, precisely them, is affecting them more than all.
In some facilities, such as the Nasser hospital in Khan Younes, Gaza's second largest, children under the age of three mostly occupy the intensive care wards, filled with victims of Israeli bombing.