Sila Husu, 7, head injured by shrapnel, needs complex medical treatment that Gaza hospital can’t provide

Aya Husu, a 39-year-old mother of six from Gaza City, told a field researcher from B’Tselem about the severe injury her seven-year-old daughter, Sila, sustained in the bombing of a shelter on July 27, 2024.

Aya and her children had moved south early in the war under orders of the Israeli military. Her husband stayed behind to take care of elderly parents who could not relocate.

Aya and her children had to move several times, enduring terrible conditions which she describes. But on July 27, things seemed to be looking up.

“I had my daughter Sila registered for classes in a tent near the shelter. She was ecstatic. She took her schoolbag, and went there with her friends. At around 11:00 A.M., the school we were staying in was bombed with several missiles. I began screaming and crying in fear for my children. Moments later, I saw Sila returning from the tent school to the shelter. She was sobbing and asking why they were bombing us. All my children screamed and cried. Around us were dead bodies, body parts, rubble and debris.

“About an hour later, the Israeli military ordered us to evacuate the school. I took my children and fled. On the way out, we saw children’s bodies, body parts, and ambulances carrying the wounded. As we tried to escape, the school was bombed again, and Sila was hit in the head by shrapnel. Her head was covered in blood. I hugged her and screamed for help. My son Muhammad took off his shirt and tried to bandage Sila’s head to stop the bleeding. I shouted for an ambulance, but no one paid attention.

“A young man came, took Sila from me, and ran with her toward the hospital. The children and I ran after him, until he handed her to an ambulance that evacuated her to Shuhadaa al-Aqsa Hospital. When I arrived there, I found Sila in the ER, critically injured. Her skull was open, and she had a fracture in the bone above her right eye and a detached retina in that eye. She stayed like that for a whole day with only an IV, without any doctor examining her, because the hospital was overwhelmed with so many wounded and dead. Later, she had surgery to stop the bleeding and close the skull fracture, and a platinum plate was implanted in her forehead above her right eye.

“Sila is still at Shuhadaa al-Aqsa Hospital. Her wounds are infected, and the hospital doesn’t have the antibiotics she needs. She needs more head surgeries to prevent fluid from leaking through her nose or eye socket. The doctors say her condition is serious and complicated, and that she needs treatment outside Gaza, but there is almost no way to get out of Gaza today.

“I try to stop her from looking at herself in pictures or in a mirror, because it affects her psychologically, especially when she sees old photos of herself. She asks when her hair will grow back, when she’ll be able to open her eye, when she’ll be pretty again.”

The B’Tselem researcher recorded this testimony on August 25.

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