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The 2-year-old toddler lay on a foil blanket, her face smeared with salve for her burns and her tiny body marked with shrapnel scars.
As doctors examined her and the tube in her chest, she squirmed, her breath coming in ragged gasps.
Siwar Abdel-Hadi is now an orphan, the sole survivor of an Israeli strike that devastated her family home in central Gaza, killing her parents, two sisters, a brother and her maternal uncle.
“The whole family was gathered around a table for lunch” when the missile struck Tuesday in the Bureij refugee camp, said Nour Abdel-Hadi, one of Siwar’s paternal aunts.
She spoke at nearby Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where overwhelmed staff rushed around dealing with an influx of wounded.
Israel’s genocidal campaign of bombardment and offensives in Gaza has left thousands of orphans.
Cases like Siwar’s have become so common that doctors have created an acronym for it: WCNSF, meaning “wounded child, no surviving family.”
The United Nations estimated in February that around 17,000 children in the territory are unaccompanied, and the number is likely higher now.
The Israeli military rarely comments on individual strikes.
On the day of the strike that killed Siwar’s family, the Israeli military claimed it hit dozens of targets across the Gaza Strip, including Hamas structures, observation posts and individual members.
Israel says it is determined to destroy Hamas following the group’s Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel.
Its campaign has killed more than 39,100 people, mostly women and children, according to local health authorities and with an unknown proportion among the nearly 10,000 yet to be identified.
Doctors often report that children constitute a large portion of the wounded arriving at hospitals.
At Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, another orphaned child was recovering from her wounds.
Weeks ago, 3-month-old Asma Ajour’s family was fleeing their neighborhood in Gaza City after Israeli military evacuation orders and an offensive.
As the family fled, Israeli shelling struck the street, killing Asma’s mother, father and two sisters, ages 3 and 5, said Asma’s grandmother, Basema Qwedar.
Asma lay in the street in her dead mother’s arms for 12 hours until her grandfather, searching for them, heard her cries and found her, Qwedar said, rocking the infant in a child’s seat at the hospital.
Two of Qwedar’s sons were killed by strikes earlier in the war, and now she has lost her daughter, Asma’s mother.
They don’t yet know who will take in Asma, but Qwedar said her daughter had told her, “If something happens to me, take care of my child.”
At Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital, Siwar’s extended family was similarly trying to figure out how to take her in.
Her grandparents are alive but ill and may not be able to raise her, Nour Abdel-Hadi said.
Otherwise, one of her aunts will take her, but they are struggling with their own children amid shortages of food and supplies due to Israel’s siege.
The Abdel-Hadis were a close-knit, loving family, relatives said.
The parents, Hisham Abdel-Hadi and Hedaia Yasin, ensured their children received high grades.
As the youngest, Siwar was showered with toys, they said.
They had fled their home three times during Israel’s attacks to escape frequent bombardments in central Gaza, but each time returned, most recently in May.
Israel “didn’t leave anything for Siwar – no father, mother or siblings. Even her toys and bed are gone,” Nour Abdel-Hadi said, sobbing.
Doctors said they were treating Siwar for second-degree burns on her face, shrapnel wounds and collapsed lungs.
“God give us the capability to raise her,” said another aunt, Amal Abdel-Hadi. “May she live a dignified life, play among other children, and not endure any more of the bombing, missiles and deprivation she has already experienced.”
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