A night saving Gaza's children: The exhausted medics rescuing the innocent and recovering the dead
ITV News spends a night with the paramedics trying to save Gaza's children, as ITV News Correspondent Rachel Townsend reports
The deafening explosions of missiles echo around them but exhausted medics keep on driving through the devastated streets of Gaza in a desperate bid to save children.
Medics from charity the Palestine Red Crescent Society spend day and night trying to rescue children caught in the firing line.
They rush to hospitals by torch light, as Israel's blockade on electricity and fuel has left the streets of Gaza in pitch black after sunset.
ITV News cameras filmed a paramedic trying to stop the blood gushing from a little girl's head, while another patient receives CPR in a Red Crescent ambulance. This was just one of the many difficult journeys the medics will complete in a night.
Harrowing footage shows their young patient trembling and whimpering on a hospital bed with blood stains all over her skin and clothes. She survived.
But sometimes the paramedics arrive too late. One medic tells ITV News: "It's a hard feeling when you try to save an innocent soul and you fail. May God be our help."
In little over three weeks, since Hamas launched its deadly attack on Israel on October 7, more than 3,000 under-18s have died inside Gaza.
According to Save the Children, that figure is higher than the number of child deaths in every global conflict last year.
The overall death toll in Gaza has surpassed 8,300, according to its health ministry. The UN relief agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said 70% of those reported killed are children and women.
More than 1,400 people, including children, have been killed in Israel during the attacks launched by Hamas.
More than half of Gaza's population are children and according to UNICEF, as many as 300,000 children have been displaced from their homes.
Local health authorities reported in 2022 that 40.5% of Gazans are under the age of 15, and the median age in the territory is 19.3 - compared to a world average of just over 30.
As the humanitarian crisis deepens in the city, with further aid convoys yet to enter, Save the Children said it is young children in particular who "will soon start dying of dehydration".
Israel has continued to pummel Gaza with airstrikes, wiping out whole neighbourhoods, and despite warnings to evacuate, strikes have since pounded safe locations.
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday rejected calls for a ceasefire and vowed to "resign Hamas to the dustbin of history”, as hundreds of Israeli hostages remain trapped in captivity inside Gaza.
In the meantime, these exhausted medics will go on rescuing survivors and recovering the dead in Gaza - doing everything possible to bring hope to those who have none.
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