GAZA, (PIC)
In the first month of the war on the Gaza Strip, an Israeli airstrike shook a residential block in the Al-Sabra neighborhood, scattering destruction and death in every corner. Amid the rubble, a small girl was thrown violently towards a tree by the force of the explosion, surviving alone while her entire family was obliterated beneath the debris. No one knew her identity, and there was no one to search for her.
Today, after 17 months of ongoing devastation, the girl has grown up in the embrace of nurse Amal Al-Khatla, who embraced her and gave her a name that reflects her resilience: “Malaak (Angel) of Al-Sabra.” This girl’s story is just one of hundreds that represent the suffering of children separated from their families by war, leaving behind wounds that never heal and fates hanging between life and death.
Nurse Amal recalls the details of the morning of October 7, 2023, when she was preparing to go to the gym, unaware that this morning would change her life forever. The sounds of explosions echoed from everywhere, announcing the beginning of a fierce war on the Gaza Strip.
As the bombardment intensified and the number of martyrs and injured increased, Amal, a nurse at the Emirates Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah, rushed to her workplace to begin long hours of continuous work amid a severe shortage of medical supplies and electricity.
A survivor girl amidst a massacre
But amid this tragedy, another story was born from the womb of pain. It is the story of a newborn girl, not yet a month old, miraculously found alive, hanging from a tree branch after the Israeli warplanes destroyed her home in the Al-Sabra area, killing all her family members.
Amal recalls the beginning of the tale on November 19, 2023, when the hospital received an urgent message: 30 newborns would be transferred from Al-Shifa Hospital after it was besieged and rendered non-functional. She and her colleagues had to prepare incubators to receive the children. Among them was a girl whose small hand bore the note: “Unknown identity girl, survivor of the massacre in Al-Sabra,” as Amal recounts in her testimony published by the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.
Amal’s heart was attached to the girl as she tried to find out anything about her relatives, but to no avail. Families had vanished, just like thousands of others who became missing persons, either under the rubble or unaccounted for due to forced displacement and massive destruction.
Malaak of Al-Sabra
From the moment Amal laid eyes on the surviving girl, she felt responsible for this little life that the war had left alone. She named her “Malaak of Al-Sabra” and became a mother to her without planning for it, providing her with care and tenderness amid the destruction and death surrounding them on all sides.
As days passed, the Ministry of Health refused to allow any entity to adopt the girl and insisted on keeping her until the end of the war. However, when the Israeli threats of invading Rafah intensified, the ministry had to make a decision regarding the remaining children in the hospital. On January 24, 2024, after realizing how attached Amal was to the girl, the deputy minister allowed her to take her home. Since that day, Malaak became a member of the family, surrounded by Amal’s love and care.
As the aggression escalated, Amal was forced to flee to Deir al-Balah, where she settled with her sister, who helped her care for Malaak. There, the girl began to integrate with other children and started calling Amal “Mama,” as if she had known no other mother in her life.
Today, after the war has ended, Malaak’s story still stands as a testament to the great tragedy left by the Israeli aggression, where thousands of children have lost their families, and thousands more are still missing. Civil records were destroyed, and identity documents were lost, making it a huge challenge to identify survivors.
