Harsh Living Conditions Aggravate Gaza Burn Injuries

File Photo: Palestinian medics and protestors wheel a wounded youth, who was shot by Israeli troops during a protest at the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, into the treatment room of Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Feb. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
File Photo: Palestinian medics and protestors wheel a wounded youth, who was shot by Israeli troops during a protest at the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, into the treatment room of Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Feb. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
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Harsh Living Conditions Aggravate Gaza Burn Injuries

File Photo: Palestinian medics and protestors wheel a wounded youth, who was shot by Israeli troops during a protest at the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, into the treatment room of Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Feb. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)
File Photo: Palestinian medics and protestors wheel a wounded youth, who was shot by Israeli troops during a protest at the Gaza Strip's border with Israel, into the treatment room of Shifa hospital in Gaza City, Friday, Feb. 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Adel Hana)

With bandages wrapped around his head and body, Attia al-Sawafiri was lying in the burns unit of a Gaza hospital, waiting for his first skin graft.

The 50-year-old Palestinian has suffered chemical burn injuries not as a result of cross-border fighting, but while trying to unblock his drains -- a common problem in the Gaza Strip, where many people live in cramped housing with dilapidated infrastructure.

The harsh living conditions and unsafe energy supplies in the Palestinian enclave, blockaded by Israel for 15 years, are contributing to the thousands of burn injuries requiring treatment each year.

At Gaza City's Shifa hospital, Sawafiri recalled how he tried to clear the drains at home with caustic soda and hot water.

But "then the soda spread and burnt my head, my hands and my legs".

The plight of Gaza's burns patients is compounded by shortages of medical equipment and supplies such as artificial skin.

A four-year-old boy who dropped a lighter on spilled fuel, setting it ablaze, was calling feebly for his mother as he was wheeled out of the operating theater at Shifa.

"We've performed a lot of surgeries on this boy," said Dr Jamal al-Assar, a burns specialist at the hospital, Gaza's largest health center.

Medics, he said, had to clean the child's wounds and apply skin grafts in multiple stages "because it's not possible to do it all at once due to the lack of a skin bank".

- Hazardous winters -
Some cases appear linked to a sense of hopelessness felt by many in Gaza, which has been under an Israeli-led blockade since 2007 when the group Hamas took power.

The restrictions on Gaza's 2.3 million people, which Israel says are necessary to contain militant groups, have crippled the economy and limited the movement of people and goods.

One of the hospital's patients was a 20-year-old man who survived a suicide attempt two months ago in which he had doused himself in fuel and set it on fire.

He lay in bed with a pained expression while holding aloft his bandaged arms.

Dr Medhat Saidam, another burns expert, said his department is seeing an increasing number of such suicide attempts, which are "linked to financial problems".

Many injuries are the result of Gaza's precarious power supply, including utility workers hit by power surges and children who touch unsafe outlets and appliances, said Dr Assar.

In the past, Gaza had suffered "a catastrophe from candles" used for lighting during power outages, with entire families being killed in fires, Saidam explained.

But the electricity supply has become more stable and people rely less on unsafe generators and candles.

This year Gaza received an average of 12 hours of mains electricity daily, up from just seven hours five years ago, according to United Nations data.

New dangers still loom in the winter, Saidam said, when many people burn coal for heat.

"Casualties are bigger than in the summer because they're trying to stay warm."

- 3D-printed face masks -
Burns injuries that occur in a split second can take months or years to recover from, with specialist care needed to help the skin regrow and minimize scarring.

Dr Abed al-Hamid Qaradaya, head of physiotherapy at a Gaza City clinic run by the charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), said medics have struggled in the past to source the equipment needed because "it's expensive and hard to find on the local market".

His clinic was also damaged by Israeli air strikes during last year's war with Palestinian parties.

Dr Qaradaya showed off a valuable piece of technology: a 3D printer now being used to help patients with facial burns.

Staff spend hours scanning a patient's face, then print a perfectly-fitting mask that helps "protect the face from deformities and preserve... its aesthetic shape from before the burn," he said.

MSF clinics across Gaza treated more than 5,500 new burns patients last year, and more than one-third of those patients were aged under five.

One of them, four-year-old Yasser Khila, was whimpering as a dressing was applied to his wounds from spilled hot stew.

While the boy was being comforted with a lollipop, his mother, Dina, said the physical injury has also had a mental impact on her child.

"He became very sensitive about everything, and he wants me to always stay by his side."

Back at Shifa hospital, where the four-year-old boy was out of the theatre and recovering under a sky blue sheet, Assar said proudly, "with treatment and close follow-up, the child is healing."



Israel Ready to Negotiate Permanent Gaza Ceasefire during 60-day Truce, Netanyahu Says

09 July 2025, US, Washington: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking with the press at the US Capitol in Washington. Photo: Douglas Christian/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
09 July 2025, US, Washington: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking with the press at the US Capitol in Washington. Photo: Douglas Christian/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
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Israel Ready to Negotiate Permanent Gaza Ceasefire during 60-day Truce, Netanyahu Says

09 July 2025, US, Washington: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking with the press at the US Capitol in Washington. Photo: Douglas Christian/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa
09 July 2025, US, Washington: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaking with the press at the US Capitol in Washington. Photo: Douglas Christian/ZUMA Press Wire/dpa

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel will likely have a ceasefire agreement with Hamas to release more Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian group. 

Netanyahu said 50 hostages were still being held captive by Hamas. Of that figure, he said, only 20 are believed to be alive. 

"I want to take them all out. We now have a deal that supposedly will get half of the living and half of the dead out," Netanyahu said in an interview on Newsmax show "The Record with Greta Van Susteren" that aired on Thursday. 

"And so we'll have 10 living left and about 12 deceased hostages, but I'll get them out, too. I hope we can complete it in a few days." 

On October 7, 2023, Hamas attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Israel's retaliation has killed more than 57,000 Palestinians, Gaza's health ministry says, and reduced much of Gaza to rubble. 

The two sides have had two ceasefires - one in November 2023 and another in January 2025- since the fighting started. 

Netanyahu said Israel and Hamas will likely have a 60-day ceasefire, which the two sides could use to try to end the conflict. 

Hamas said on Wednesday there were several sticking points in the ongoing ceasefire talks including the flow of aid, withdrawal of Israeli forces from the Gaza Strip, and "genuine guarantees for a permanent ceasefire." 

Netanyahu's interview with Newsmax comes as he wraps his third visit to Washington since President Donald Trump took office in January. 

Speaking of Trump, the Israeli leader said his country has never had "such a friend, such a support of Israel, the Jewish state in the White House." 

Last month, the US joined Israel in striking Iran, a move that Trump has said "obliterated" three of Iran's nuclear sites. 

When asked about a damage assessment, Netanyahu said, "Within months, they could have produced atomic bombs."