How Yazan starved to death amid Israel’s war on Gaza
Al Jazeera
A family remains in shock at how a vicious war destroyed their son’s health and took him away from them.
Rafah, Gaza – The loss of nine-year-old Yazan, or Yazouna as his mother called him, hangs like a dark cloud over the el-Kafarna family’s tiny living space.
They huddle together in a shelter that Sharif el-Kafarna rigged up out of bits of wood, cardboard and sheeting in front of the third-floor door to the elevator in an UNRWA school in Rafah.
It is tidy inside and a string of Ramadan bunting hangs on one wall, but nothing can hide the fact that the family of five sleeps, prays, eats and spends all day in a space about eight metres square (80 feet square).
Breaking down, his mother wept: “This is our first Ramadan without Yazan, God has ordained this for us and we cannot complain, we can only praise him and have faith.”
Yazan died on March 4 at the Abu Youssef al-Najjar Hospital in Rafah, hooked up to breathing machines and IV drips, his body having wasted away to nothing during five months of relentless war during which his family ran from one supposed “safe place” to another, terrified, destitute and hungry.
