Despite being evacuated from the Gaza Strip, the spectre of the war’s horrors continues to haunt those who were forced to leave.

In Doha’s Al Thumama Complex, Alma Abu Dahrouj sits quietly next to her  grandmother, Muna Roubine, watching her embroider a piece of fabric. 

The 10-year-old was injured in an Israeli attack on her home in the Nuseirat refugee camp last November. Her baby sister Sham, who Alma was holding at the time of the attack, and her six-year old brother Ahmad were killed.

The airstrike resulted in the amputation of Alma’s left leg.  She was rescued along with her mother Arwa from under the rubble. 

“Her leg was already amputated by the time they brought her to the hospital,” her grandmother, who goes by the name Umm Waleed, told Doha News.

Arwa, a maths teacher, sustained injuries from shrapnel, resulting in a broken shoulder and lower back. She left the Gaza Strip for Egypt’s Al Arish, and in January, was evacuated to Doha as part of a Qatari campaign.

Led by Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the initiative aims to sponsor 3,000 orphans and provide medical care for 1,500 injured Palestinians from Gaza.

Since its launch on December 3, 2023, Qatar has evacuated more than 500 wounded people, along with over 800 of their companions and 700 others with special cases.

Alma and her grandmother were first evacuated to Turkiye on November 28 before Qatari authorities reunited them with Arwa in Doha on March 20.

The child, who is severely traumatised and can barely talk, has been receiving treatment at Sidra Medicine. Doctors there have been working to get her a prosthetic leg after she underwent at least five surgeries. 

Despite being in Doha, Umm Waleed is struggling to take care of Alma, with her mind consumed by news of her other relatives who remained in the Gaza Strip.

“My soul is still there, in my house, with my daughters. I cry whenever I talk to them,” she said before being choked up by her tears. 

‘Worse than the Nakba’

Since October 7, Israel has relentlessly killed over 37,000 Palestinians – the majority being women and children – while wounding at least 85,000 others. More than two-thirds of the strip has been decimated, and nearly all of Gaza’s 2.3 million population are displaced. 

With the collapse of Gaza’s healthcare system and severe shortages of basic necessities resulting from Israel’s blockade, Qatar’s initiative is aimed at easing the suffering of those wounded.

Haitham El Bourdaini, a father of two, was one of the lucky ones who made it to Qatar with his family in late March, in order to treat his injured baby daughter Leen.

The ten-month-old’s body had suffered from a nervous shock caused by an Israeli bombing of their house in Deir El Balah last January.

Fighting back tears, El Bourdaini began to recount the horrors of his experience when he was in Gaza, ranging from multiple displacements to the constant battle of finding food and keeping his family alive.

“They say the Palestinian Nakba was in 1948, but during this war, it’s even worse,” he told Doha News while watching his young son Abdullah play with other children at the compound.

“People in Gaza wish for death more than survival, because those who survived have witnessed death thousands of times,” he said.

At Al Thumama Complex, a residential compound that was initially built for World Cup fans, amputated children wandering around with their scooters and bicycles is a common sight.

Other evacuees have spent months receiving medical treatment at different hospitals in Qatar, including Hamad General Hospital, The View Hospital and Sidra Medicine.

In a bid to uplift their spirits, Qatari organisations have set up recreational events for adults and children, including daily embroidery classes, arts and crafts sessions, and sporting activities. 

The children, who now attend the Palestinian School in Doha’s Abu Hamour area, often paint and draw their memories of Gaza as a form of art therapy. Some of their artwork depicted puddles of blood and bags of flour, referring to the hunger they faced and the massacres that took place on a daily basis. 

Like Umm Waleed, El Bourdaini felt that he was only physically in Doha but mentally still in Gaza.

“My body left Gaza, but my soul stayed there,” he said.

A war against the children and unborn

Dr. Sandro Rizoli, the medical director of trauma at Hamad General Hospital, told Doha News that the cases the hospital has received are unlike anything he witnessed in his medical career, particularly regarding children who suffered from amputations.

More than 10 children a day lose their limbs in the Gaza Strip due to Israel’s attacks, marking the territory home to the largest cohort of child amputees. 

“We have experienced other armed conflicts before and I think there’s no doubt that the number of children and women wounded [in Gaza] is higher than what we had seen before,” Dr Rizoli said.

Pregnant women are also targeted, as witnessed by 27-year-old Wafaa Abu Samaan, who lost her home in Beit Lahia last October while she was eight months pregnant.

At the time, Abu Samaan was sleeping on the floor on one side of their living room along with her 32-year-old husband, Saeed Abu El Foul, and their two daughters, Maryam, 5, and Shahad, 8.

On that fateful day, an Israeli missile landed on their house without exploding. As Abu El Foul turned to check if wife was okay, a second Israeli missile landed, this time killing him and severely wounding Abu Samaan.

“We painted our house, brought new furniture, and within two weeks they bombed our house. All of our memories are now gone,” she said while in her hospital bed at the Hamad Surgical Speciality Centre.

Abu Samaan’s left arm and right leg were amputated and her face sustained several injuries. Both of her daughters survived but were badly wounded in their legs, and Shahad, the older one, lost all of her teeth.

Abu Samaan was forced to flee the northern Gaza Strip in a wheelchair, pushed by her brother. It took them five hours to reach the south on the so-called “safe corridor”, where Abu Samaan witnessed other pregnant women getting shot by Israeli soldiers.

“They were telling pregnant women ‘you already have way too many children. We kill you because you keep having children’,” Abu Samaan recalled.

“I saw them shoot pregnant women. I had to hold a bag filled with clothes to hide my baby bump so they wouldn’t notice me,” she said.

Eventually, Abu Samaan left the Gaza Strip in December, where she gave birth to her son Ra’fat in Al Arish with her body attached to life support. 

A war on the press 

Palestinian photojournalist Abdullah Hajj, 32, was lucky to survive  the two-week Israeli raid of Al-Shifa Medical Complex that took place in March.

Hajj, a photojournalist for UNRWA and freelancer, was injured by an airstrike on February 24 while taking footage at Al Shati refugee camp, resulting in the amputation of both of his legs. 

After 15 days in the ICU, he ended up being among hundreds trapped in Al-Shifa Hospital during the raid. There, he witnessed unimaginable horrors, while lack of medical care resulted in maggots coming out of his wounds.

During the raid, patients next to him were left to die as Israeli forces shot and killed nurses and doctors.

Hajj said the Israeli soldiers bragged about how many people they killed each day before forcing the nurses to bury them.

“They didn’t even allow the nurses to pray over their bodies, they’d shoot them,” he told Doha News from his bed at the Hamad Surgical Speciality Centre.

Hajj longs to go back to Gaza.

“The burden we journalists carry is very heavy,” he said. “When the war ends, we will document the re-construction process. Gaza still needs us.”