Mahmoud Ajjour (9), who was injured during an Israeli attack on Gaza City in March 2024, finds refuge and medical help in Doha, Qatar.
As his family fled an Israeli assault, Mahmoud turned back to urge others onward. An explosion severed one of his arms and mutilated the other. The family were evacuated to Qatar where, after medical treatment, Mahmoud is learning to use his feet to play games on his phone, write, and open doors. Aside from that, he needs special assistance for most daily activities, such as eating and dressing. Mahmoud’s dream is simple: he wants to get prosthetics and live his life as any other child.
The photographer, who is from Gaza and was herself evacuated in December 2023, lives in the same Doha apartment complex as Mahmoud in Qatar. She has bonded with families there, and documented some of the few badly wounded Gazans who made it out for treatment.
Children are disproportionately impacted by the war. The United Nations Works and Relief Agency (UNWRA) estimates that by December 2024, Gaza had more child amputees per capita than anywhere else in the world. From early on in the war, Qatar, which has been prioritizing and developing its healthcare system, mediated deals to evacuate critically injured people for treatment. By March 2025, more than 7,000 patients had been evacuated from Gaza for medical treatment, but at least 11,000 others remained there awaiting evacuation, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) The evacuees have been taken to countries including Egypt, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey.
Tens of thousands of others have been killed and more than 100,000 have been injured, according to the territory’s health authorities. The health system, decimated during the war, is ill-equipped to care for them: by March 2025, only 21 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partly functional, according to the WHO.
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