Ola Jamal, 36, was nursing her two-month-old son, Zain, when a missile hit al-Nasr hospital in Gaza in November 2023. She had gone there with her family believing a children’s hospital would be a safer place to shelter.
Instead, the blast tore through the building, and fragments struck her arm while she was holding her baby. Speaking later from a prosthetics centre in Cairo, Jamal recalled the terror of the moment. She said the hospital was filled with panic, screams and confusion, and there was no immediate help available.
Her blood covered her baby’s face as her other children sat beside her during the chaos, reports The Guardian.
According to Jamal, it took about an hour before an ambulance arrived to take her to al-Shifa hospital in Gaza. There, doctors were forced to amputate her arm. During that period, she became separated from her children, who were temporarily placed with another family.
A month later, Jamal travelled to Egypt with her mother for additional treatment. She is now among thousands of Palestinians whose lives have been permanently changed by severe war injuries.
Data cited from the World Health Organization and the Palestinian Ministry of Health indicate that since October 2023, more than 6,000 adults and children have undergone amputations. At one point during the fighting, reports suggested that around 10 children a day were losing one or both legs.
For many survivors, the loss of a limb is only the beginning of a much longer struggle. Shadi Sharif Ayesh al-Sous, a father of two, arrived at a clinic in Cairo in February 2026 to be fitted with his first prosthetic leg.
He had been injured in a missile strike on 3 December 2023 while collecting firewood with relatives near a tent camp in the al-Zahra area of Gaza.
Shadi said he was first wounded below the knee and reached the nearest hospital by mule. Doctors told him amputation was necessary.
Hoping to save his leg, he travelled to Egypt for treatment, but by then gangrene had spread, and the leg had to be removed above the knee.
Even while adapting to his new reality, his thoughts remain with his family. He says he wants to return to Gaza as soon as he is permitted, because his daughters are still there.
The difficulties facing Palestinians with life-altering injuries extend beyond medicine. Egypt is often the first destination for people leaving Gaza for treatment, yet many of them exist in a kind of legal uncertainty.
They are usually not granted formal residency or refugee status, and the UN has not assumed responsibility for Palestinians in Egypt.
Without proper documentation, many injured survivors say they are confined to temporary living arrangements, often sharing crowded apartments or staying in hostels.
They cannot work and live with the anxiety of an uncertain future. In these circumstances, access to advanced prosthetic care and long-term rehabilitation becomes extremely difficult unless charities or aid groups step in.
Yousef El Deeb, a 25-year-old prosthetist at Orthomedics in Cairo, said his clinic has treated around 300 Palestinian patients since October 2023, mostly with help from NGOs such as the Turkish organization Sadakataşı.
He explained that most patients simply cannot afford prosthetic treatment on their own, making outside financial support essential.
For Jamal, the suffering has not ended with surgery and displacement. She says the emotional wounds carried by her children are just as painful.
Her son Zain, now over two years old, still wakes during the night crying. Doctors, she says, told her that trauma can remain in the body long after the event itself has passed.
The separation from her child has left a deep mark on the family. Jamal said that during two years apart, Zain was cared for by seven different women.
By the time he was older, he no longer recognised either his mother or father. Although they are now in Cairo, she says her children constantly speak about home and ask to return to Gaza, even as that home may no longer exist in the form they remember.
