Lying on a gurney in a hospital with dwindling power and few drugs left, young Alma Hashish tells of the moment her family's lives were forever changed. A bomb fell close to the neighbour's house they were sheltering in, sending shrapnel through the bodies of her mother and young siblings. "We were in our house, some people came and told us to leave it. We left and went to our neighbour's house," she told <i>The National</i> from Shifa Medical Complex, Gaza's biggest hospital. "Suddenly the occupation forces bombed the house next to us. We were all injured." Alma, with a split lip, shrapnel wounds to her face and hands, and a bandaged shoulder, calmly recounted the injuries to her mum and siblings. "My mum had a leg injury. My sister had a leg and hand wound. My little brother's hand was broken." "My little nephew was killed." Alma is just one of more than 6,000 Gazans who have been injured in six days since Israel began bombing the tiny coastal strip, reducing many neighbourhoods to rubble. The number of injured, and the death toll of 1,400, is expected to soar in the coming days. All day, every day since the bombing began, ambulances, taxis and private cars have pulled up outside Shifa hospital with bloodied victims running inside, or carrying others. Medics at the 500-bed facility are struggling. The neighbourhood, Al Rimal, relatively prosperous in one of the world's poorest cities, has been reduced to rubble. Power lines are severed and buildings were toppled. Israel claims many Hamas officials lived there. A blockade by Israel means that doctors have just a few days of petrol to run generators that keep services running and people alive. Dr Mohammad Abu-Selmi, the hospital's director, said in all the years of Gaza's suffering he had never witnessed such a flood of patients. "There isn't any health system that can handle this number in the world. Such actions can't be tolerated," he told <i>The National</i>. "There are deaths every single moment and minute. There are scattered remains of children. "Entire families have been wiped out. Women, elderly. It's something that I have never seen in my entire life." Mohammed Talal Al-Gharabli has a young son on a drip in the hospital. He needs surgery that doctors here cannot carry out. "My son is in a critical condition. Open the borders. Any border. Egypt, Turkey or any other place," he said. "Any country, just to receive treatment. That's enough. I already lost one child, I can't lose the other. It's not fair. This is not a normal life."
