Gaza children find joy through support animals
Palestinian children play with animals at the rehabilitation space in the Nuseirat Refugee Camp.PHOTO:AFP
Light-hearted chatter ripples through a tent in the central Gaza Strip as a boy in a wheelchair gently strokes a white rabbit and another stands entranced by a bright green bird.
For a moment, this group of young children who have lived through the devastation wrought by two years of gruelling conflict are captivated by the joy provided by the animals around them.
"The natural presence of animals and birds, with their vibrant colours, absorbs negative energy," said Rashid Anbar, who runs animal-assisted psychological support sessions in Al-Zawayda camp.
"Interacting with them fosters an atmosphere of happiness and positive energy," he added, saying the children's reactions left him feeling "encouraged" too.
Displaced Palestinian children, who fled their homes due to Israeli strikes, play with one of the cats belonging to the Harb family who survived Israeli airstrikes, at a tent camp in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip November 8, 2023. REUTERS
The war, sparked by Hamas's October 2023 attack on Israel, has killed at least 72,568 people in Gaza, displaced nearly its entire population and reduced swathes of the Palestinian territory to rubble.
Hundreds of thousands of displaced people still live in tents, and conditions remain dire despite a ceasefire that came into effect in October.
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The devastation is acutely felt by the youngest in society.
Sima Alami, adolescent and youth programme officer at the UN Population Fund, said in March that more than one million children in Gaza needed mental health and psychological support services.
"Sadly, 96% of these children feel that death is imminent, reflecting the depth of the fear and trauma they experience daily," she added, describing a "widespread mental health emergency" across the Palestinian territories.
'Overcome fear'
Colourful paintings hang from the plastic tent walls of a makeshift art studio in Zawayda, where more than a dozen children sit in a circle, clapping and giggling as Anbar conducts his session.
One young girl beams as several small birds sit on her arms, shoulders and head, with a particularly inquisitive one nibbling one of her earrings.
Along with the rabbit and birds, the children are able to pet a small tortoise, a hedgehog and a fluffy white dog.
"The purpose is to enhance therapy and learning through playing with animals. It is about fostering a culture of kindness towards animals and cultivating a generation with a sense of compassion for them," Anbar said.
Rashid Anbar runs animal-assisted psychological support sessions. PHOTO: AFP
"It aims to help children overcome their fear barriers by engaging in play with animals, touching them, and acquiring knowledge about them, including the specific species to which they belong, what covers their bodies, such as feathers or fur, and whether they give birth or lay eggs."
Anbar said he had found many domestic animals abandoned on the streets during the war.
"I decided to gather these animals and use them for therapeutic purposes so I could care for them, knowing if they stay on the streets, they could die," he explained.
Airstrikes and firefights between Israel's military and what it says are Hamas fighters still occur on a near-daily basis in Gaza despite the truce.
According to the territory's health ministry, at least 792 people have been killed by Israel's military since the start of the ceasefire.
Colourful paintings hang from the plastic tent walls of a makeshift art studio in Zawayda. PHOTO:AFP
The military says five of its soldiers have also been killed in Gaza over the same period.
Unexploded bombs, a threat to Gazans
War-torn Gaza is heavily contaminated by unexploded ordnance, which frequently kills and maims people and could threaten recovery efforts far into the future, the UN said today.
Unexploded ordnance, ranging from undetonated bombs or grenades to simple bullets, has become a common sight in the Gaza Strip since the start of Israel's campaign in the Palestinian territory.
The United Nations Mine Action Service (UNMAS) said it had data suggesting that since the start of the conflict, more than 1,000 people had been killed in Gaza due to "indirect conflict" from the remnants of battle.
In Gaza, unexploded ordnance — bombs and missiles that didn’t detonate — put communities in grave danger.@UNMAS & partners are working to remove these hazards, protect lives, and create safe routes for people and humanitarian aid.https://t.co/MlFuMMqKUq pic.twitter.com/Yh9V0Sp74s
Julius Van der Walt, UNMAS chief in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, stressed that the number was certainly a severe under-estimate.
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Half of the known casualties were children, he told reporters in Geneva.
Speaking alongside him at a press conference on mine action work worldwide, Narmina Strishenets of Save the Children UK, also highlighted the heavy toll on youngsters.
A report by the organisation published last year found that in 2024, the use of explosive weapons in Gaza left an average of 475 children each month with potentially lifelong disabilities, including amputations.
Today, Strishenets said, Gaza has "the largest cohort of child amputees" in the world.
Van der Walt said UNMAS had so far been unable to conduct an extensive survey of the full scope of the problem, but "the evidence already suggests a high density of explosive ordnance contamination across the Gaza Strip".
So far, UNMAS has identified "more than 1,000 items of explosive ordnance" during missions conducted over the past 2.5 years.
Compared to Gaza's small geographic size, that means there is about one piece of explosive ordnance "every 600 metres", he pointed out.
And those are only the items that have been found.
"We have barely scratched the surface in understanding what the level of contamination is," he acknowledged.
Adding to the danger was Gaza's very high population density.
Prior to the conflict, Gaza was already one of the most densely-populated places on Earth, with around 6,000 people per square kilometre, Van der Walt said, pointing out that the war had effectively halved the space available, and doubled the density.
"Explosive weapons are being used all across the territories, including in densely-populated refugee camps," he said, pointing to a recent case where explosive ordnance was found inside a tent where people had been living for several weeks.
A UN team inspects an unexploded bomb lying on a main road in Khan Younis as experts warned thousands of unexploded bombs across Gaza. PHOTO:UNOCHA
At the same time, "humanitarian convoys risk detonation as they travel throughout the Gaza Strip, and early recovery efforts are essentially stalled before they can even begin", he said.
Van der Walt pointed to an assessment that, in a best-case scenario, it would cost around $541 million to address the explosive ordnance threat, if all necessary permissions were granted and the equipment required were accessible.
He warned that the contamination, including within mountains of debris, was so vast and so varied that it was "very close to impossible to ... do a full assessment", and that ordnance would likely remain a problem for decades to come.
He pointed to the World War II bombs that continue to be discovered during construction projects in Britain.
"We can anticipate something along those lines" in Gaza, he said.