‘The doctor told me count to three – and he cut my leg’: The generation of Palestinian children with devastating amputations after a year of war
A generation of children and young adults in Gaza are coping with devastating amputations after a year of brutal war.
It’s left a terrible legacy, with thousands – many of them babies – coping with missing limbs.
Warning: This story contains images and descriptions readers may find distressing
Those in Gaza like Jihad have absolutely heart-breaking war wounds. The three-year-old’s left leg has been amputated right up to the hip, his right leg cut below the knee. The doctors couldn’t save three of the fingers on his left hand.
Jihad, who lost both his legs and three fingers
He cries constantly and he’s writhing around in pain when Sky’s Gaza crew sees him. His mother Mai tells our team that he’s completely changed since the bombing – going from an active, talkative toddler to a depressed little boy who can’t accept his crushing lack of mobility.
“He keeps asking me for slippers and he has no feet,” she says despairingly.
The whole family was injured when a bomb landed near their tent in Khan Younis where they’d fled to. But Jihad was by far the worst affected.
She’s desperate to get him the help he so urgently needs but there’s very little aid getting into Gaza, and there has been no evacuations from the war zone, even for the very sick or wounded, for weeks now.
We were given rare access on board a planeload of aid and personnel being flown into the area. But this aid was not going into Gaza. It was instead going to a floating hospital run by the United Arab Emirates and anchored off the coast of Egypt – the nearest secure position it has permission for near Gaza.
The entrance to the floating hospital
The hospital’s patients are all wounded or ill from Gaza. They include children – some who arrived like ten-year-old Yazan, alone without even a guardian, his left leg already cut below the knee. He’s already spent several weeks on board the floating hospital. The doctors and nurses all know him.
Yazan, 10, who arrived at the hospital without a guardian
The hospital’s director, Dr Ahmed Mubarak tells us: “We are his family right now and we try to give him all the support he needs.”
Dr Ahmed Mubarak, director of the floating hospital
Yazan tells the director he’s “good” and that he plays football and games like the other children on board – but his eyes are sunken and he has dark shadows around them. He’s just a little boy, all alone, thrown into and devastated by this man’s war which has changed his life forever.
The ship has been converted into a state-of-the-art medical facility with five decks of equipment including an emergency room, operating theatre and ICU.
Here, the rescued patients are given access to specialist surgeons, medics, nursing staff and equipment and medicines beyond the wildest dreams of those trapped in the Gaza war zone. And most of all, those here are given sanctuary from the bombing, mayhem, blood and chaos of the war a short distance away.
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Israel-Hamas war: Timeline of events since 7 October
The UN has estimated about one thousand children like Yazan had amputations in just one month of the war last November. It’s a shuddering thought wondering how many more there must be now.
Children playing at the humanitarian centre
‘I just want to walk properly again’
At the Humanitarian City in Abu Dhabi – as it’s named by the Emiratis who set it up – we see a horrifying number of them. Amidst the children playing on the swings, or boys having a go at the arcade machines provided or those making their way along the corridors, you’ll catch glimpses of them.
There’s a young girl doing her best to get momentum on the swings with only one arm. At the arcade, there are boys in wheelchairs with legs missing or riding the arcade motorbike with only one leg.
In the physio room, a 13-year-old girl called Tuqa is being persuaded to try to walk on her artificial limbs. She has not one but two prosthesis to try to balance on and get the measure of. The double-amputee is struggling.
Tuqa and her prosthetic legs
“I’m scared,” she tells the physio who is trying to coax her into letting go of him. “Try, try, come on, let’s go,” he says.
Tuqa in Gaza
I ask her what her ambition is and she says with heart-rending simplicity: “I just want to walk properly again.” Then she adds: “And go back home.”
A childhood of surgeries
Rakan is one little baby who has made it out. He has his right leg missing but he’s too young to know that he’s seen as one of the “lucky” ones.
Baby Rakan’s parents were denied permission to leave Gaza
He’s not too young to be wary of the doctors who are measuring him up for his new prosthesis though. He’s learned this process can sometimes hurt.
He has a lot more pain to come. His childhood is going to be consumed with multiple surgeries as he’s fitted and re-fitted with artificial limbs as he grows.
Rakan’s grandmother is his guardian on the floating hospital
Rakan too came out of Gaza without his parents who were refused permission to leave. His guardian now is his grandmother. She tells us she doesn’t support Hamas. We’re not naming her for the safety of the family still in Gaza.
“Me, my family, all of us, don’t like Hamas,” she tells us. “If I have a neighbour who says they are [Hamas], I’ll distance myself from them.”
She adds: “I don’t like them and I won’t live in the same area but it’s impossible to know who’s who.”
‘The doctor told me to count to three’
When we hear Fuad’s tale of survival, I begin to think the loss of one of his legs might be the least of his wounds. He tells of a bomb hitting his parents’ bedroom in Gaza, killing them instantly as well as three siblings.
Fuad testing out his prosthetic leg
The sixteen-year-old was showered in rubble and pulled out by his cousin who took him to Al Shifa hospital which was already crowded. “I was laying in the hallway of the hospital,” he tells us, “I could see my leg was half gone.”
The doctor told him he was going to have to amputate it and he had no anaesthetic.
“I told him, wait for my father,” he said. “I didn’t know my father was killed then… and he told me: count to three – and he cut it. He put my leg in a bag next to me.”
Fuad in hospital in Gaza
He shows us pictures of himself in the crowded hospital, sometimes with dressings on his amputated leg, sometimes not. He spent 20 days there until the hospital was stormed for the first time by Israeli troops.
“We had no water, food or electricity,” he says. “And me and the guy next to me had a spoonful of food a day.”
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I ask him if he saw any armed men or Hamas in the hospital as the Israelis designated Al Shifa a command and control centre for the militant group. “The only armed men I saw were Israeli soldiers,” he said angrily. “And if you’re asking me if we were Hamas. We are not. My father was a doctor. We had nothing to do with Hamas.”
Everywhere we look there are tales of survival and horrifying death-defying battles. A year on, the trauma and war is still waging.
:: Alex Crawford reports with camera operator Jake Britton, specialist producer Chris Cunningham and our Sky News teams inside the Gaza Strip
World
Vladimir Putin warns US and UK over ‘escalation of aggressive actions’ as new missile hits Ukraine
President Putin has warned he could hit back against countries supplying weapons being used against targets in Russia.
He appeared to be referring to the US and UK, who this week gave Ukraine permission to use long-range missiles over the border.
The Russian president said his military would “respond resolutely in a mirror way” to an “escalation of aggressive actions”.
War latest: Follow live updates
“We believe that we have the right to use our weapons against military facilities of the countries that allow to use their weapons against our facilities,” Mr Putin said in a TV address.
British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles were fired into Russia for the first time this week, just days after President Biden authorised the same policy shift.
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‘Tense new phase in Ukraine war’
President Putin responded on Thursday by saying his military had tested a new intermediate-range missile in a strike on the Ukrainian city of Dnipro.
The Russian leader called it the Oreshnik, Russian for hazelnut tree, and said air defences wouldn’t be able to destroy it as it travels 10 times the speed of sound.
Ukraine said earlier that a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) might have been used on Dnipro, but the Pentagon said it believed it was an experimental medium-range weapon.
It said Russia had given notice of the launch through nuclear risk reduction channels.
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Putin fires ‘new type of missile’
Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, said on Thursday night the use of a new missile was a “clear and severe escalation”, the second this year after North Korean troops were sent to bolster Russian forces.
Mr Zelenskyy urged a stronger response from allies and said on X that the Russian leader was “spitting in the face of those in the world who genuinely want peace to be restored”.
According to public broadcaster Suspilne, a Ukrainian parliamentary sitting scheduled for Friday has been postponed over security concerns, with no more planned until December.
Military experts say modern ICBMs and intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) are extremely difficult to intercept.
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‘The UK is now directly involved in this war’
Meanwhile, Russia’s ambassador told Sky News that Britain’s missile decision had significantly changed its participation in the conflict.
Andrei Kelin said: “Absolutely, Britain and the UK is now directly involved in this war, because this firing cannot happen without NATO staff, British staff as well.”
He called it a “deliberate cheating of us” and said he had received multiple assurances the Storm Shadows would only be used inside Ukrainian territory.
However, Russia has long used Iranian-made drones to attack Ukrainian cities.
The ambassador said the US and UK move “seriously escalates the situation” and the West should carefully consider Russia’s new rules for using nuclear weapons – as underestimating the risk of escalation is “dangerous”.
Read more:
Why is there talk of World War Three?
President Putin again raised the spectre of nuclear weapons this week – something he has done multiple times in recent years – when he approved changes that lower the threshold for such a strike.
Many have dismissed the move as empty sabre rattling, but Russia’s ambassador told Sky News he hoped the change “would be carefully considered by Western experts”.
Russia’s defence ministry also claimed on Thursday to have shot down two British-made Storm Shadow missiles, six HIMARS rockets, and 67 drones.
Experts believe the use of Western missiles inside Russia is unlikely to change the course of the war but could put Russian forces in a more vulnerable position and complicate logistics.
A tall man emerged from an array of gym equipment, walking towards me, slightly swaying as his prosthetic leg flexed and stepped in time with his natural one.
His right arm was missing, and his left was a smooth black prosthesis arm with his hands and fingers clenched in a fist.
He was introduced to me as Anton. I wasn’t sure how to greet him other than to say hello.
He saw my hesitation, and smiling he raised his left arm to shake my hand, his fingers opening and closing around my hand as we observed a customary gesture of greeting – a handshake.
His handshake was gentle and completely natural. I was simply amazed. I’ve never seen or experienced anything like it.
“Wow, it works,” I said.
“Yes, it does,” he replied with a smirk, and then carried on walking down the corridor.
This was to be a day of incredible experiences.
We are in the Tytanova Rehabilitation Centre in Kyiv. Much of it is a large gymnasium kitted out with state-of-the-art equipment designed for amputees to keep fit and rehabilitate.
The amputees are all soldiers injured in the war with Russia. These men may never fight again, but they’re in a renewed battle to rebuild their lives, and here they’re being helped with extraordinary technology.
It’s called osseointegration – a titanium implant that is connected to the bone of the patient and the prosthetic arm or leg clicks on to that.
But this is the remarkable bit. The nervous system in their limb is gone so they learn to send messages to their muscles and their new arm or leg comes alive, following instructions from their brain.
The technology was first used in Ukraine a year ago and can be used on all limbs.
We meet Oleksandr Solomiany, 48, who lost his right arm last December in the battle of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine. Before the war, he was a tech entrepreneur specialising in the environment.
Oleksandr is still learning how to use his new arm. He walked us through a parking lot and into another building for another training session.
This isn’t a physical training session though, it’s a mental one. He will be practising how to teach his brain to command his muscles to move his bionic arm.
It’s his third session and he says it will take at least two or three more months before he gains the skills to fully operate it.
Oleksandr sits down and takes off his t-shirt, he then removes his bionic arm so that sensory wires can be attached to his amputated arm and to the chest and back muscles surrounding it.
The training session today will be with a bionic prosthetic arm that is not physically attached to him, only wired into him.
“What are you trying to do?” I ask him while he looks at a screen, concentrating hard.
“I imagine that I close my arm and rotate,” he tells me while moving the prosthetic using his brain and chest muscles.
Oleksandr’s trainer Yaroslav Patsukevych is a biomedical engineer who volunteers here.
48-year-old Oleksandr Solomiany who lost his right arm last December in the battle of Bakhmut in eastern Ukraine
He explains to me: “You can fool the system to overwrite the muscles that you usually use with your hands, for example, to teach the chest muscles to do the same thing.
“When the patient contracts his muscle, this prosthesis calibrates with his brain and recreates this command with the prosthesis.”
I asked Yaroslav where this prosthesis comes from. He told me the hand is made in Britain, the arm is made in America, and the technology is Swedish.
And the man – I think to myself – is Ukrainian.
Yaroslav Patsukevych (left) is helping Oleksandr learn to use his new limb
For Oleksandr, even though this is mental training it is physically draining. I ask him if it’s a big experience for him, realising that he can actually have an arm that works.
“It’s the first stage of [a] long, long way in my life. It’s only my first prosthesis and technologies never stop. I will expect another technology, like chip in the brain, or something else,” he replies.
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Oleksandr leads a very active life and has no regrets about his battle injury – the focus is now on the future.
“This arm helps me with my routine, with my everyday tasks. I feel better with this arm, like normal people, like a normal man.”
The osseointegration surgery costs £20,000 for each lost limb, while a prosthetic arm or leg costs £80,000.
Viacheslav Zaporozhets (right) founded Tytanova Rehab and also supports evacuations from the frontline
The founder of Tytanova Rehab, Viacheslav Zaporozhets, is a millionaire businessman who wanted to help with the war effort. He fundraises money to help more and more men, and he says the beneficial effects on the amputees are immediate.
“I’ll tell you this, we’re bringing them back to life, even in a psychological sense,” Viacheslav Zaporozhets says.
“I always say, you’re not broken. We’ll teach you how to drive, even how to swim.
“From day one, we demonstrate this. When a new patient arrives, a veteran greets them and shows them what they’ve learned to do.”
A soldier who lost both legs exercises at Tytanova Rehab, Kyiv
He and his organisation don’t just rehabilitate the injured, they also evacuate them from the frontlines.
With their 22 ambulances, they’ve saved the lives of over 30,000 men since the start of the war, bringing them to safety.
The figure is, frankly, mind-blowing.
This war has claimed the lives of huge numbers of fighting men, but the figure itself is not published.
But we do know that the number of living casualties will be much, much higher, and these “bionic men” are just a fraction of them.
World
Arrest warrants issued for Israeli PM Netanyahu and former defence secretary Gallant over alleged war crimes
Arrest warrants have been issued for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former defence secretary Yoav Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC).
The warrants are for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity related to the war in Gaza that Israel launched following the 7 October attacks by Hamas.
The prime minister’s office said the warrants against him and Gallant were “anti-semitic” and said Israel “rejects with disgust the absurd and false actions”.
Another warrant was issued for the arrest of Hamas leader Mohammed Diab Ibrahim al Masri for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Al Masri, also known as Mohammed Deif, was the mastermind behind the 7 October attacks.
It is unclear if he is still alive, following an airstrike that Israel claimed killed him earlier this year.
Neither Israel nor the US are members of the ICC. Israel has rejected the court’s jurisdiction and denies committing war crimes in Gaza.
Former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett said the warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant were a “mark of shame” for the ICC.
The court originally said it was seeking arrest warrants for the three men in May for the alleged crimes and today announced that it had rejected challenges by Israel and issued warrants of arrest.
The new UK Labour government said in the summer it would not oppose the ICC’s right to issue the warrants.
Benjamin Netanyahu addresses the UN general assembly. Pic: Reuters
Warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant
In its update, the ICC said it found “reasonable grounds to believe” that Netanyahu and Gallant “bear criminal responsibility” for alleged crimes.
These, the court said, include “the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare; and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts”.
Netanyahu previously spoke of his “disgust” at the suggestion the ICC would seek an arrest warrant for him.
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A video released by Hamas in 2005 shows a man identified as Mohammed Deif. Pic: AP
Warrant for Hamas leader
The ICC also said it has issued an arrest warrant for Hamas leader Al Masri, saying it has “reasonable grounds to believe” that he is responsible for crimes against humanity including murder, extermination, torture, rape, as well as war crimes including taking hostages.
Discussing the 7 October attacks, the court said: “In light of the coordinated killings of members of civilians at several separate locations, the Chamber also found that the conduct took place as part of a mass killing of members of the civilian population, and it therefore concluded that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the crime against humanity of extermination was committed.”
In its statement, the ICC said the prosecution was not in a position to determine whether Al Masri is dead or alive, so was issuing the arrest warrant.
The court previously said it was seeking an arrest warrant for Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of Hamas who was subsequently killed in July.
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