Five-year-old Adam Afana, a war-wounded child evacuated to Beirut, embodies a crisis that is likely to haunt Gaza for years to come. The exponential increase of orphans in the territory has created a profound rift in the family and social fabric of the Palestinian enclave. Mohamed, his father, succumbed to his wounds a few days after the Israeli bombardment that wiped out the Afana family. His seriously wounded mother, Chérine, is in Egypt.
There are no confirmed statistics of orphans in Gaza at this stage, but Palestinian civil society estimates put the number of young Gazans who have lost one or both parents at between 15,000 and 25,000. In February, UNICEF estimated that at least 17,000 children were unaccompanied or separated from their parents – whether dead, hospitalized or detained. In April, another UN agency, UN Women, put the number of motherless children at 19,000.
Adam's left arm was injured and treated at the American Hospital in Beirut thanks to the foundation set up by British-Palestinian surgeon Ghassan Abu-Sittah. To accompany Adam to Lebanon, it was necessary to find a surviving uncle: Eid Afana, who was in Egypt, not Gaza, when the family was killed.
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