'Spiral of doom': Girl, 8, loses hair amid Israel's bombardment of Gaza
A group of leading UK charities are tonight launching a joint appeal for urgently needed humanitarian aid for millions of people in Gaza, Lebanon and across the Middle East. Caught in the middle are the youngest and most vulnerable victims, as ITV News Correspondent John Ray reports
War consumes so much and leaves its victims with so little. For an eight-year-old girl in Gaza, called Sama, it’s her dignity that’s been lost.
It takes her some courage to remove her pink head scarf. Her once beautiful hair is gone. It is a measure of her trauma.
So too are her tears.
"I wish I could go back to school. To play with my friends," she told ITV News.She’s one of many thousands of Gazan children who have spent a year on the run from Israeli missiles.She now lives in a tent in the southern city of Khan Younis; one of many camps for displaced people.
Who knows when she’ll need to move again? Who knows if she’ll ever be able to return to her home in Rafa?"The treatment she needs is to feel safe," her mother said.
"She can’t keep hearing the bombing and the sounds of ambulances. My daughter needs her childhood back."
According to the Disasters Emergency Committee:
1.9 million people have been displaced from their homes – over 90% of the population
2.1 million people – almost the entire population – face acute food
The healthcare system is close to collapse, with a critical shortage of medical supplies, and medics overwhelmed by the scale of need
In Lebanon, already in economic crisis before the war, aid agencies have warned of what they call a "spiral of doom".
You can see the humanitarian calamity unfolding before your eyes in the makeshift shelters along the seafront in Beirut.Alma fled her home in the city’s suburbs two weeks ago, to try to put a safe distance from the bombs and her grandchildren. But it’s not far enough.
"We are always afraid," she told me. "When the kids hear the bombs, they say; ‘Grandma….they’re hitting, they’re hitting.'"Winter will arrive before too long and there will be many families camping out on the pavement. There is a severe shortage of accommodation.More than a million people have fled their homes - 400,000 of them children. There is a desperate shortage of shelter and often other life essentials.
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UNICEF warns of a "lost generation" in a small country already grappling with multiple crises.
In both Gaza and Lebanon, Israel’s enemies are deeply embedded within their respective communities.
Hamas, whose fighters slaughtered so many Israelis on October 7 – is not yet defeated and Hezbollah’s missiles still fly across the southern border.No one on any side of these conflicts is predicting a ceasefire any time soon. And all the while, war inflicts a heavy price on the innocents.
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