Maryam Ahmed works her wheelchair with determination in Doha's Thumama complex, which houses wounded people from Gaza. The six-year-old girl is coming back to life after losing her family, and a leg, in an Israeli strike.
Maryam was evacuated to Qatar in February after her home was hit by two missiles, killing her mother, father and brother. Her right leg is “in heaven” with them, she says, lifting the hem of her dress over her stump.
The girl is one of some 2,000 residents of the complex, injured and their companions, who are now trying to adjust to life in the wealthy emirate, far from the war raging at home in the Gaza Strip.
Her 20-year-old aunt, Fatima Farajallah, who accompanied her to Qatar, says that "psychologically Maryam is better now." But both remember the morning their house was pulverized.
In the confusion, Maryam, who was unresponsive, was placed among the dead. "She was not moving and was not making any sound. Then, suddenly, I heard a voice," her aunt recalled.
The girl was hospitalized for two months at Hamad Hospital in Doha, and underwent three surgeries.
Faced with her new environment, she “asks a lot of questions,” explains Fatima Farajallah.
– Moving from one reality to another –
She herself is disoriented. "Here, there is everything (...) Why is Gaza not like other countries?" she asks.
In late June, the UN refugee agency said an average of 10 children were losing one or both legs every day in Gaza.
The war was triggered by an unprecedented attack by Hamas on October 7 in southern Israel that killed 1,197 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli data.
Of the 251 people abducted, 111 are still being held in Gaza, 39 of whom are dead, according to the Israeli army.
The Israeli offensive in Gaza has so far left nearly 40,000 dead, according to the health ministry of the Gaza government, led by the Palestinian Islamist movement, which does not provide details on the number of civilians and combatants killed.
Mousa Mohammad, head of the rehabilitation department at Hamad Medical Corporation, runs group therapies inside the Thumama complex for 190 enrolled children, aged three to six.
These treatment sessions, which include socialization and art therapy, are an "important pillar" of rehabilitation, he explains.
At first the children were prone to violent outbursts and could not sit still, he said. Some "hit doors, people and other children." But while progress was slow, "their behavior changed," he said.
“Return to Gaza.”
At dusk, residents venture outside the compound, built to house visitors to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. Of the 1,000 wounded transferred from Gaza for medical treatment, 300 have undergone amputations.
Karim Al-Shayyah, 10, rides his bike with ease despite losing his left leg. It was amputated below the knee after being hit by shrapnel while playing in Gaza.
"We were having fun outside when they bombed a restaurant near our house," he said.
His mother, Sabrine Al-Shayyah, explains that "the injury changed his personality." The boy has become nervous, lonely. He misses his friends, one of whom was recently killed in Gaza, he says.
With the help of a psychiatrist, however, Karim's outlook is improving. "The interaction with the children is very positive," says his mother.
"Here we are comfortable, they take care of us and make us play," the boy appreciates. But he hopes "to return to Gaza once the war is over."
English 
French