Gaza's sole survivors: Children face lives marked by tragedy and trauma

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In September last year, an Israeli air strike on central Gaza killed Yazan Tutah's mother, father and two siblings.

Yazan, aged three, spent nearly a month fighting for his life in a hospital bed, unaware that he had lost all the people closest to him. Today he lives under the care of his grandmother, Ramziya Tutah, 67, who returned to Gaza city earlier this year during the two-month ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

The child's story is heart-breakingly common in Gaza. Official figures show more than 5,000 families have only one surviving member after a year-and-a-half of war that has devastated the territory.

Although Yazan and his grandmother have found shelter again, the home they returned to feels empty. The real battle for Yazan is not his recovery from physical wounds, but from the psychological trauma of losing his family.

Since the deadly strike last year, Yazan has been locked in a silent struggle with grief and confusion. Despite the tireless efforts of his grandmother and maternal uncles to ease his pain and encourage him to play with other children, Yazan remains deeply withdrawn.

"He always asks about his parents and brothers," Ms Tutah tells The National, her voice breaking. "At night, he often wakes up crying, calling for his mother. Sometimes he screams and sobs for a long time before he falls asleep again."

Yazan requires psychological support, a rare resource in Gaza with much of the enclave's healthcare and social services destroyed.

"When the ceasefire happened, we hoped there would be more attention to children like Yazan," Ms Tutah said. "But the ceasefire didn’t last."

After the war resumed last month with renewed Israeli strikes, Yazan’s condition worsened. Every time he hears an explosion, he begins to ask for his family again, Ms Tutah adds.

"According to our official governmental statistics, there are 5,070 Palestinian families in the Gaza Strip from which only one surviving member remains,” Ismail Al Thawabteh, director of Gaza's government media office, tells The National.

“These surviving individuals urgently need special care, ongoing psychological support and attention to help them overcome the deep crises they are experiencing due to immense loss and pain. However, unfortunately, the necessary resources to provide such support are currently unavailable due to the lack of sufficient personnel and the closure of the crossings by the occupation, which has prevented medical delegations from entering Gaza."

He says sole surviving family members represent "a tragedy that embodies the worst outcomes and consequences of this genocide".

“Most of those categorised as sole survivors are children, which only deepens the crisis they face as children, by nature, already require special care, let alone after losing their mother, father and entire family," he says.

“Many sole survivors are living through an even greater tragedy because several members of their families are still trapped under the rubble to this day, their bodies not yet retrieved, honoured or buried.”

Mahmoud Sukkar, 17, is among the children hit hardest by the war. In October last year, an Israeli strike on northern Gaza killed 17 of his family members.

"My family was bombed while I was outside the house," he tells The National. "Afterwards, I stayed briefly with my uncle. Then we had to flee to the south. I ended up living alone in a tent in Al Mawasi – those were the hardest moments of my life."

Even months later, Mahmoud struggles to grasp the enormity of his loss. "It still feels like a dream," he says. "I can’t comprehend living without my family, they filled my life with love and warmth. They were all gone in the blink of an eye, without having done anything wrong.

“When I first received the news, I was outside the house. A friend tried to soften the blow, telling me some were injured, some had been martyred and some were still alive. But when I arrived at the hospital, I found that they had all been martyred. That moment marked the beginning of the harshest and most painful chapter of my life.”

Mahmoud says a sole surviving family member is "not a normal human being". "He has lost the most precious people in his life and no one can replace that," he adds. "No one can ease the loneliness or carry the weight of his pain."

Civilians account for more than half of the 52,300 people killed in Gaza since the war began on October 7, 2023. More 18,000 children and 12,400 women have been killed and more than 2,180 families wiped out, according to figures released on Sunday by the government media office.

The death toll includes more than 1,400 doctors and healthcare personnel, 113 civil defence members, 212 journalists and more than 750 humanitarian workers. More than 13,000 students, 800 teachers and 150 academics and university professors have been killed, the statistics show.

“The destruction is so widespread and systematic that it points unmistakably to a deliberate strategy of targeting civilians and critical life-sustaining sectors, in what human rights groups describe as acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing,” the government media office says.