'My children cling to me as dogs raid graves near our shelter'

The children perceive the dogs snarling outside, conscionable beyond the flimsy integrative of the tent.

The 7 children of Rehab Abu Daqqa assemblage astir their mother. She is the past harmless harbour successful their lives. They person shared things, these children and their mother, which cannot beryllium communicated to those who person not seen the things they person seen. Is determination a connection to explicit what a kid feels knowing that conscionable a fewer yards away, animals are dragging a assemblage from a grave?

The vocabulary of puerility is inadequate amid the horrors of this exigency cemetery successful Rafah.

Scared is the connection Rehab Abu Daqqa uses.

WARNING: This study contains descriptions immoderate readers whitethorn find disturbing

That is accurate. But determination is much to it, she knows. The children person seen dogs eating the bodies. A quality limb lying by a fence. So yes they are scared. But revolted too, and uncomprehending. The children who erstwhile had a home, went to school, lived according to the established rhythms of their household and community, are present refugees successful a spot that reeks of death.

"This greeting the dogs took retired a assemblage from 1 of the graves and were eating it," Rehab Abu Daqqa says. "From nighttime until dawn the dogs bash not fto america sleep… our children support holding connected to maine due to the fact that of however frightened they are."

The dogs travel successful packs of dozens. Domestic pets whose owners are dormant oregon displaced, mixed with Rafah's existing colonisation of strays, each of them present feral and scavenging for immoderate they tin eat. The cemetery has galore shallow graves wherever radical spot their dormant until a clip comes erstwhile they tin beryllium taken to their location area. On immoderate graves relatives person placed bricks to effort to support the dogs distant from the dead.

Rehab Abu Daqqa is gaunt and exhausted. Her rima and chemoreceptor are covered by cloth to fend disconnected the stench of the graves. She praises the young men who came earlier to reinter a assemblage dragged retired that morning.

"I don't judge that maine oregon my children should unrecorded adjacent to a cemetery. My kid is successful the 3rd people and contiguous alternatively of playing a crippled helium was drafting a sedate and successful the mediate helium drew a dormant body. These are the children of Palestine… What tin I archer you? Miserable, the connection miserable doesn't adjacent explicate it."

The cemetery is 1 of respective successful Gaza that has go a refuge for radical whose homes person been destroyed successful the fighting. There are much than 1.4 cardinal radical crowded into Rafah - 5 times its pre-war population. According to the Norwegian Refugee Council that works retired astatine 22,000 radical for each quadrate kilometre. Already illness is spreading, with outbreaks of diarrhoea, hepatitis A, and meningitis - arsenic good arsenic a continuing hunger crisis.

Rafah is wherever the refugees of Gaza scope the last wall, the borderline with Egypt which is closed to the overwhelming bulk of the displaced. They get aft being pushed from 1 spot to different by the beforehand of the Israeli forces. Rehab Abu Daqqa has fled 3 times already and whitethorn soon person to uproot her household again if the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) violative connected Rafah goes ahead.

Israel's Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said a subject cognition successful Rafah volition spell up "with oregon without" a ceasefire to destruct what helium says are 4 Hamas battalions successful the city. Hamas insists determination tin beryllium nary woody without a committedness to permanently extremity the war. Far close members of the Israeli conjugation furniture are informing Mr Netanyahu against compromise. The Finance Minister, Bezalel Smotrich, a modular bearer for the settler movement, has called for "absolute destruction" successful Rafah, saying determination tin beryllium nary "half work".

"Where bash they [refugees] determination to? " asks Dr Rik Peeperkorn, determination manager of the World Health Organization (WHO), who precocious returned from Rafah.

"We already person a situation successful health. We person a h2o and sanitation crisis, a nutrient crisis. There's a humanitarian disaster. So, there'll beryllium conscionable different humanitarian catastrophe connected apical of this… What we expect volition beryllium important further mortality and sickness erstwhile a subject incursion happens. So, a batch much radical dying… a batch much decease and a batch much diseases."

Dr Peeperkorn worked for 7 years successful Afghanistan with the UN and is not a antheral who is easy daunted. But erstwhile we met successful Jerusalem helium looked tired. The tiredness of a antheral who wakes each greeting to the certainty of a situation that seems to endanger ever worse consequences.

The WHO is already preparing for further tract hospitals to assistance if radical are forced to move. But what happens to the earnestly sick and the elderly, the 700 kidney dialysis patients who are presently being treated successful a installation which erstwhile utilized to cater to 50?

"If you look astatine our wellness sector, it is crippled already and an incursion volition really mean that we suffer different 3 hospitals… similar they cannot beryllium reached, they mightiness beryllium damaged, they mightiness beryllium partially destroyed. We are preparing for it with a contingency program which is similar a set aid."

My BBC colleagues person provided graphic grounds of the conditions wrong hospitals, filming time aft time passim the war. At the European Hospital successful Rafah families are camped successful immoderate abstraction they tin find, successful the grounds and inside. They hole meals successful wards. Their children roam on the darkened corridors, past the wounded being wheeled connected trollies, an aged pistillate sitting connected her ain staring into the distance.

In the exigency attraction ward, 11-year-old Yassin al Ghalban is crying connected his bed. His legs are gone, amputated beneath the genu aft an aerial strike. A comparative lasting by the furniture says, "he is surviving connected painkillers".

At the cemetery, Rehab Abu Daqqa watches her children play a fewer yards from the graves. The dogs are gone but the children support adjacent to their mother. Soon she volition beryllium connected the determination again due to the fact that she cannot carnivore for her children to enactment successful this place.

There is nary speech of anticipation here. Hope successful Gaza departs astatine antithetic speeds according to your circumstances. It tin vanish successful a 2nd with the sidesplitting of a loved one. Or it tin depart incrementally, hr aft hour, arsenic you are pushed from 1 squalid campy to another, and words neglect arsenic the questions from the children heap up.

Additional reporting by Alice Doyard and Haneen Abdeen