In a darkened hospital ward in Gaza, 16-year-old Ahmad Al-Gharabli lies silent, held between life and death. On 9 May 2025, a missile fired from an Israeli drone shattered the quiet of his street in Al-Rimal, raining down shrapnel that pierced his skull. Since then, Ahmad has not woken. A fragment remains lodged in his brain, a cruel souvenir of a war that spares neither soldier nor child.

Despite rushed surgeries at Al-Shifa Hospital, the damage is too complex for Gaza’s collapsing health system. Doctors can do no more. The only chance for Ahmad’s survival lies beyond the sealed borders — in a hospital abroad equipped for such critical care. But Gaza is a cage, and Ahmad, like so many others, is trapped inside it.

His father, Essam, waits at his bedside, counting minutes like heartbeats. “We’re losing him,” he says, his voice steady but broken. “He needs to be moved, now. But we’re blocked at every turn.”

Ahmad’s story is not an isolated tragedy. It reflects a brutal pattern: children mutilated by munitions engineered to shred bodies into unrecognisable pieces. The use of such weapons, documented by multiple rights organisations, has turned Gaza’s streets into fields of metal and fire. And amid this devastation, families are left begging for permission to save their loved ones.

The world speaks of ceasefires and diplomacy. But in Gaza, a boy lies still, his future slipping away with every unanswered plea.