Layan al-Baz cries in agony when the effect fades of the painkillers she receives after her legs were amputated — the result of an Israeli strike on Gaza.

“I don’t want a false leg,” the 13-year-old Palestinian says.

The impoverished Pales­tinian territory, under a crippling Israeli-led blockade for years and besieged since Oct 7, suffers severe shortages of food, water and fuel, and medical supplies are scarce.

“I want them to put my legs back, they can do it,” Baz says in desperation from her bed at the hospital’s paediatric ward. Every time she opens her eyes as the painkillers wear off, she sees her bandaged stumps.

Her mother, Lamia al-Baz, 47, says Layan was wounded last week in a strike on Al-Qarara district of Khan Yunis, part of Israel’s unrelenting military campaign. Lamia says two of her daughters, Ikhlas and Khitam, and two grandchildren including a newborn baby were killed when the Israeli strike hit Ikhlas’s home. The family were there to support Ikhlas who had just given birth.

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