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“My friends ask me if I have cancer,” said displaced Gazan child Sama Tbail, fighting back tears after losing most of her hair during Israel's war on the besieged strip.
The eight-year-old's long locks have fallen out due to the psychological shock from living in a conflict zone, according to doctors. Sama lives in constant fear of an Israeli attack on the area where she is sheltering.
Around 1.9 million people – about nine in 10 of the Gaza population – are estimated to have been internally displaced by the war, roughly half of them children. More than 40,200 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the fighting in October.
“The doctors tell me that I need to eat well and take vitamins,” Sama told The National, adding that she needs medicine not available in Gaza due to an Israeli blockade on the territory's borders. “I’m scared my hair won’t grow back, how can I go to school?” she asked.
The youngster wears a headscarf and said her friends have been asking her: “Are you bald?” “I wish I could go outside for treatment. I wish I could wake up without the sound of ambulances or bombings,” she added.
But her biggest wish is to wake up in her own home, she told The National to the sound of shelling. Sama fears her hair will not return unless she escapes the violence. “How will my hair grow back while we are living this way?” she said.
The United Nations children's agency Unicef has been calling for a ceasefire since the war began and has warned of “unimaginable horrors” that Gazan children have endured. “They deserve an immediate ceasefire and a chance for a peaceful future,” Unicef said in a statement in May. It said there was “no safe place for children as the humanitarian crisis deepens”.
