Palestinian children bear the brunt in Israel’s assault on Gaza

She hardly speaks or eats. Two days ago, 7-year-old girl Suzy Ishkontana was pulled from the debris of her family’s home that was flattened by a wave of Israeli airstrikes.

She spent hours buried in the wreckage as her siblings and mother died around her.

Children are being subjected to extensive trauma in Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip. For some, it’s trauma they’ve seen repeatedly throughout their short lives.

This is the fourth time in 12 years Israel launched a brutal military offensive on Gaza. Each time, Israel has unleashed heavy airstrikes at the densely populated Gaza Strip, while Hamas is trying to retaliate by firing rockets toward Israel.

According to Gaza health officials, at least 63 children are among the 217 Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza since the latest Israeli assault began on May 10. On the Israeli side, 12 people have been killed by Hamas rockets.

Israel says it does everything it can to prevent civilian casualties, including issuing warnings for people to evacuate buildings about to be struck. Israel’s military has pounded hundreds of sites in Gaza, where some 2 million people live squeezed into a tight urban fabric.

Videos on social media from Gaza have shown the grief of survivors from families wiped out in an instant.

“They were four! Where are they? Four!” wailed one father outside a hospital after learning all four of his children had been killed. Another showed a young boy screaming “Baba,” as he ran to the front of the funeral procession where men were carrying his father’s body to burial.

The Ishkontana family was buried under the rubble of their home early Sunday, after massive bombing raids of downtown Gaza City that Israel said were targeting a Hamas tunnel network. The strikes came without warning.

Riad Ishkontana recounted to The Associated Press how he was buried for five hours under the wreckage, pinned under a chunk of concrete, unable to reach his wife and five children.

“I was listening to their voices beneath the rubble. I heard Dana and Zain calling, ‘Dad! Dad!’ before their voices faded and then I realized they had died,” he said, referring to two of his children.

After he was rescued and taken to the hospital, he said, family and staff hid the truth from him as long as they could. “I learned about their deaths one after another,” he said. Finally, Suzy was brought in alive, the second-oldest of his three daughters and two sons, and the only survivor.

Though she had only limited physical bruising from her seven hours under the rubble, the young girl was in “severe trauma and shock,” said pediatrician Dr. Zuhair Al-Jaro. The hospital was unable to get her the psychological treatment she needs because of the ongoing fighting, he said.

“She has entered into a deep depression,” he said. Only today, he said Tuesday, did she eat something after she was allowed briefly outside the hospital and saw her cousins.