Amaal Ismail Mohamed Al-Khatla, 35 years old, a nurse at the UAE Hospital in Rafah, resides in an apartment in the Tel Sultan area of Rafah, near Al-Noor Mosque.

Testimony Date: March 3, 2025

At approximately 6:30 AM on October 7, 2023, I was preparing to go to the gym when I suddenly began to hear the sounds of loud explosions echoing from every direction. Initially, I thought it was just an escalation, like usual, that would end after a couple of days. I decided not to leave the house. After a short while, as I followed the news, things became clearer, and it was evident that this was the beginning of war.

Immediately, an emergency plan was put in place at all hospitals in the Gaza Strip, as the number of martyrs and the wounded began to rise significantly. I headed to my workplace, where we worked under a very challenging emergency schedule, as the number of cases coming to the hospitals exceeded the medical capacities available. As a result, we had to stay in the hospital for extra shifts.

At the beginning of the war, Rafah was one of the quieter areas in Gaza, with targeted strikes on specific objectives. However, day by day, as the number of displaced people increased and the Israeli military tightened its grip on Gaza’s healthcare services, the situation worsened. We were severely struggling inside the hospitals due to the lack of medical supplies and resources, especially in comparison to the growing number of wounded. With power outages and fuel shortages affecting Gaza, hospitals were at constant risk of being out of service.

On November 19, 2023, I was on duty in the neonatal unit when we were notified that 30 babies from the Shifa Medical Hospital would be transferred to the UAE Hospital in Rafah due to the siege and closure of Shifa. Therefore, we had to prepare the incubator to accommodate these babies, most of whom were newborns and simultaneously injured.

They were to be housed at the UAE Hospital until arrangements could be made for them to travel to Egypt for further treatment.

When the babies arrived, I was checking on them when I noticed one child with a tag on her hand that read “Unknown girl, survivor of a massacre in the Sabra area.” From the moment I saw her, a newborn who couldn’t have been more than a month old, my heart immediately went out to her.

I started to care for her personally and began asking how she ended up at Shifa Hospital. The doctor accompanying the children from Shifa told me that she was from the Sabra area in Gaza City, where she had been pulled from a tree after Israeli airstrikes hit a residential block over the head of its residents. She survived by being thrown onto a branch, and it was unclear from which home she had been thrown.

Two days later, it was time for the children to be transferred to Egypt. However, due to the child’s unknown identity and the fact that she had no guardian with her, she was not allowed to travel. The Ministry of Health refused to let her go, as she could not be sent alone to receive treatment abroad, and it was impossible to establish her identity. Thus, she remained at the hospital, and we continued to care for her until any of her relatives could identify her, which would allow her to travel for treatment.

I closely followed her health condition, as she was suffering from severe anemia and a blood infection. We provided her with the necessary blood to stabilize her health. After two weeks in the hospital, her condition started to improve. During this period, many people came forward wanting to adopt her, but the Ministry of Health refused, insisting that she would remain with the Ministry until the end of the war and would then be transferred to an official institution, such as an orphanage, to care for unidentified children.

During that time, feeling a deep attachment to the child, I requested permission from the Ministry’s Director to give her a name so that if any of her family came forward, they could identify her. I named her “Malak Al-Sabra,” after the area she came from, hoping her family would recognize her by that name. I gave her special attention, making sure she had everything she needed and engaging with her so she wouldn’t suffer from isolation or detachment.

I spent as much time as possible caring for and playing with her. She became very attached to me, and soon, everyone at the hospital began referring to her as “the daughter of nurse Amal.”

I repeatedly asked the Director of the Ministry of Health if I could take Malak home with me until her family was found, but he refused, stating that I could only care for her within the hospital’s walls.

However, as the situation in Rafah worsened and threats of a ground invasion escalated, the Ministry of Health had to make a firm decision regarding the children in the hospital who had no family. At that time, five children, including Malak, had no relatives. The Ministry decided to allow me to take her home after seeing how strongly she had bonded with me.

On January 24, 2024, I took Malak home to my house in Tel Sultan, where I cared for her as though she were my own child. I made sure to provide her with the best care, giving her the highest quality milk to substitute for breast milk, along with necessary vitamins to ensure her healthy growth, as she had been severely underweight when she first arrived at the hospital. I also provided her with the best diapers and supplements, even though they were expensive and hard to find due to shortages.

We stayed in our home until the Israeli military threatened to evacuate the entire city of Rafah. We then moved to my sister’s house in Deir al-Balah, where the situation was somewhat better. Deir al-Balah wasn’t being heavily targeted, and there were enough supplies like water and food. When I went to work, my sister, who had been a great help in caring for Malak, would take care of her. Malak became accustomed to us, and the whole household began to treat her as one of their own, and there was no distinction between her and the other children.

After the ceasefire began in Gaza on January 19, 2025, we returned to Rafah, specifically to the Tel Sultan area, but this time we rented a house, as the Israeli army had destroyed our home. My family and I, along with my sister’s family, now live in this new house.

Malak has integrated well with my sister’s children, who are of a similar age to her, and this has helped her engage with the outside world. It also prevented her from developing any behavioral issues, such as autism. She has come to see us as her family and now calls me “Mama,” as she has grown deeply attached to me. Since then, I have been trying to reach out to various organizations in hopes of finding any of her relatives. However, based on estimates and the massacre that occurred in the area where her family lived, it seems that all of her relatives have likely been martyred.