‘We followed the life of three children who escaped the war in Gaza. What did we get here ‘

Zakaria is 11 years old and lives in Gaza. He said that he has seen thousands of bodies since the war started.

But at an age when children are usually found in an orbit, Zakaria is working voluntarily in one of Gaza’s working hospitals – Al -Axa.

As a succession of the ambulances, which hawks the victims of war between Israel and Hamas, the middle city pulls out of the convenience in Deer al-Balah, clearing a way through the Zakaria crowd so that new incoming patients again Can be obtained and came in for treatment.

A moment later he is undergoing a hospital corridors with a stretcher and later takes a small child to an emergency room.

Many of his school friends have been killed since the conflict began and hanging around the hospital means Zakaria’s witnesses look at the shocking scenes. He says that once, after an Israeli strike, he noticed that a boy was burnt in front of him.

“I must have seen at least 5,000 bodies. I saw them with my own eyes,” he tells our cameraman.

Zakaria is one of the children and youth whom we spent nine months for our BBC documentary Gaza: how to avoid a warzone.

This is a film that my colleagues Yousef Hammash and I co-directed from London, as international journalists were not allowed to enter Gaza Strip by Israel and report independently since the start of the war 16 months ago. Is.

To collect footage and interviews, we appointed two cameramans who live in Gaza – Amjad Al Fayoomi and Ibrahim Abu Ishiba – messaging apps, internet calls and mobile phone networks regularly communicate with them. .

Yousef and I wanted to make this documentary to show that what is the everyday life for the Ghazan people, trying to avoid the magnitude of this struggle because it was revealed. We finished making the film a few weeks ago, the day the current ceasefire began.

We focused on a young woman with three children and a newborn as they are innocent in this war, which came in an unstable stay on January 19 when A The hostage release deal between Hamas and Israel made effective.

According to Hamas’s Health Ministry, more than 48,200 people have been killed in Gaza during the aggressive Israeli. The military action followed the attacks on Southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023, killing around 1,200 people and 251 were taken hostage.

By and large we were filmed in a region of southern and central Gaza, which was placed by the Israeli army as a “human region”, where the Palestinians were asked to go for their safety. Despite its designation, between May 2024 and January this year, the region was killed about 100 times, According to the analysis of BBC verified. Israel defense forces said that she was working there for Hamas fighters.

We wanted to know how the children got food, decided where to sleep and how they captured themselves while trying to survive.

13 -year -old Abdullah described the film. He speaks excellent English to attend the British school in Gaza before the war and he can continue with his education.

10 -year -old Rende with the help of his elder sister performs a cooking show on Tikok. They make many types of dishes, even though war means that they cannot receive proper materials, and are more than a million followers.

We also followed 24 -year -old Rana, who has given birth to a baby girl ahead of time. She has been displaced three times and lives near the hospital with her two sons and her parents.

Some of the film also see how Medix fought to keep people alive in Al-Aksa Hospital, which was Described by British doctors in January 2024 As the only working hospital at Central Gaza.

Here we got Zakaria.

All the people working in the hospital know the boy. He is definitely, still a child and not a worthy medicine, but he is always hanging around, waiting for someone to help, in the hope that he gets some food or money in return Can do.

Sometimes he helps carrying equipment for local journalists, stretcher with people injured or dying other times.

When there is a quiet moment, it helps to clean the blood and dirt from the ambulance.

He has no school to go and he is the only person in his family who earns money. He does not stay with them because he has very little food or water, he says, and lives on his own in the hospital and sleeps where he can. One night it is in the CT scan room, in another journalist tent or behind an ambulance.

There were many nights that she was sleeping.

As much as they try, the hospital staff cannot keep him away from the chaos of taking care of the casualties.

Zakaria gives idolatry to paramedics and is considered part of the team. One of them said, takes him under his wing. Whenever he considers Zakaria as a child, he says, the boy gets upset.

Other employees sees Zakaria and patients in the hospital taking care and attention and teach him to give IV drip.

In the recognition of his efforts, they also make her a short set of blue scrub – in which he is very proud.

Said that it tries to ensure that the boy still gets a glimpse of childhood and in the film we follow him on a beach trip.

Sitting under the fronts of a tree branch, Zakaria said that it is said in lunch. He says that Shavarma is perfect. Jokes said that this is the only time when the boy ever “stops”.

But said that concerns Zakaria have seen so much death and destruction that he can never fit again with children with children.

Zakaria herself is watching beyond childhood.

“I want to be a paramedic,” they say. “But first I need to leave from here.”

As told to George Sandman

Watch – Gaza: How to survive is a Warzone on 17 February (UK -ONLI) on BBC Two and iPlayer at 21:00 pm