Hundreds of Thousands of Children Shell-Shocked After The War In Gaza

30 January 2015

- Sayed Bakr lived through a deadly missile bombardment in the darkest days of the war in Gaza.

But posing underneath a portrait of his closest brother, Mohammed, who he lost in that attack, proved too much. After volunteering to stand with the picture, the 12-year-old broke down and called for his mother.

Sayed and his friends were the target of one of the most harrowing episodes of last summer’s war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. While playing football on the beach, they came under fire from an Israeli pilot who apparently mistook them for militants.

Four boys from the Bakr family died in the missile strike and four were injured. In the immediate aftermath, Sayed was left paralysed with terror, unable to speak, writhing hysterically against a wall.

Today, more than six months later, he is one of hundreds of thousands of children in Gaza who need treatment for shell-shock.

After his crying fits, nightmares and frequent violent outbursts he was given a course of powerful anti-psychotic drugs for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He no longer goes to school, and is frequently visited by visions of the blast.

“I used to dream that I was dead,” said Sayed, speaking hesitantly in the living room of his family’s spartan home, a few hundred yards from where the strikes happened. “I always saw my brothers and cousins running after me in the dream. When the missiles struck and we were running away, I was certain we were all going to die. “Even today I am in continuous fear. Whenever I hear a loud noise or a bang, I feel terror.”