The life of 4 children surviving in Gaza

Zakaria is 11 years old and lives in Gaza. He believes that he has seen thousands of bodies since the war began.

But at an age when children are typically in a classroom, Zakaria is voluntary in one of the few hospitals that work from Gaza: Al -aqsa.

As a succession of ambulances that transport the victims of war between Israel and Hamas stop outside the facilities in the central city of Deir al-Balah, Zakaria clears a path through the crowds to recover newly arrived patients and hurry them to Enter to receive treatment.

Moments later, run through the halls of the hospital with a stretcher and then take a small child inside to the emergency room.

Several of his school friends have been killed since the conflict began and hanging on the hospital means that Zakaria is witnessing shocking scenes. He says that once, after an Israeli strike, he saw a child in front of him burned to death in a fire.

“I must have seen at least 5,000 bodies. I saw them with my own eyes,” he tells our cameraman.

Zakaria is one of the children and young people who spend nine months after our BBC Gaza documentary: how to survive a war zone.

It is a film that my colleague Yousef Hammash and I co -directed in London, because Israel has not allowed international journalists to enter the Gaza Strip and inform independently since the beginning of the war 16 months ago.

To gather the images and interviews, we use two cameramen living in Gaza, Amjad al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba, communicating with them regularly using messaging applications, Internet calls and mobile phone networks.

Yousef and I wanted to make this documentary to show what everyday life for the people of Gazán is trying to survive the horrors of this conflict as it developed. We finished filming a few weeks ago, the day the high fire began.

We focus on three children and a young woman with a newborn because they are the innocent in this war, which reached an unstable pause on January 19 when a The hostage release agreement between Hamas and Israel entered into force.

According to the Hamas Ministry of Health, more than 48,200 people have died in Gaza during Israel’s offensive. Military action followed the attacks to the south of Israel for Hamas on October 7, 2023 in which some 1,200 people were killed and 251 hostages.

In general, we filmed in an area of ​​the south and center of Gaza for Israel’s army as a “humanitarian zone”, where the Palestinians were told that they went to their own security. Despite its designation, the area itself was hit almost 100 times between May 2024 and January this year, According to the BBC Verify analysis. Israel’s defense forces said he pointed to the Hamas fighters who operated there.

We wanted to know how the children found food, decided where to sleep and how they took care of while trying to survive.

Abdullah, 13, tells the movie. He speaks excellent English after having attended British school in Gaza before war and does everything possible to move forward with his education.

Renad, 10 years old, makes a kitchen program on Tiktok with the help of his older sister. They do many types of dishes, although war means that they cannot obtain adequate ingredients and have more than one million followers.

We also follow Rana, 24, who has given birth to a girl prematurely. She has been displaced three times and lives near the hospital with her two children and her parents.

Some of the films also analyze how doctors fought to keep people alive at the Al-Aqsa hospital, which was described in January 2024 by British doctors As the only hospital in operation in Center of Gaza.

That’s where we find Zakaria.

All who work in the hospital meet the child. He, of course, is still a child and not a qualified doctor, but is always circling, waiting for the opportunity to help someone, hoping that he can receive some food or money in return.

Sometimes it helps transport teams for local journalists, other times stretchers with injured or dying people.

When there is a quiet moment, it helps to clean the blood and dirt of the ambulances.

There is no school for him and he is the only person in his family who wins money. He does not stay with them, since they have little food or water, he says, and instead he lives alone in the hospital and sleeps where he can. One night is in the CT scan room, another in the journalist store or on the back of an ambulance.

There were many nights that fell hungry.

As much as they try, the hospital staff cannot keep it away from the chaos of the care of the casualties.

Zakaria Idolea to paramedics and wants to be considered part of the team. One of them, he said, takes him under his wing. Every time he treats Zakaria as a child, he says, the child gets angry.

Another staff sees the care and care that Zakaria pays them and patients in the hospital and teach him to give someone a drip IV.

In recognition of their efforts, they even make it a miniature set of blue bushes, in which it is proud.

This tries to ensure that the child still has an appearance of childhood and in the film we follow them on a trip to the beach.

Sitting under the leave leaves of a branch of trees, Zakaria touches the lunch that has been bought. The Shawarma, he says, is perfect. Said jokes that is the only time the child “closes.”

But he said the concerns that Zakaria has seen so much death and destruction that he could never fit with the children of his age again.

Zakaria is looking beyond childhood.

“I want to be a paramedic,” he says. “But first I need to get out of here.”

As he told George Sandeman

LOOK – GAZA: How to survive a war zone is in the BBC DOS and IPLAYER at 9:00 p.m. on February 17 (only the United Kingdom)