'It was her leg or her life': Teen from viral video explaining how she escaped Gaza after amputation | World News

It was a moment of horror that went viral in Gaza: a video of an amputation on a dining table. No anesthesia. No bandages. Just a bucket, soap and a kitchen knife.

It was December 19, 2023, and the war in Gaza was in its third month. The Israeli bombardment of the northern part of this narrow strip of land was the most intense.

In the Bseiso family home, an apartment on the ground floor of a six-story building not far from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, Ahed Bseiso, 17, lay across the table from the kitchen.

The table, where Ahed's mother was baking bread moments before, was now a scene of unimaginable horror, as Ahed's uncle Hani, who is a doctor, carried out an emergency operation.

Ahed's left leg was badly injured and her right leg was in tatters.

Desperate, she had begged her uncle not to amputate it, but Hani knew he had no choice.

It was his leg or his life.

A few minutes earlier, Ahed was on the top floor of their building trying to call her father who lives in Belgium. The upper floors were the best for phone signal and every day she and her older sister, Mona, went there to tell him they were still alive.

That morning, as she struggled to make a connection, she noticed large Israeli tanks in the street. Then a huge explosion split the air.

“I heard a noise and a wall collapsed on me,” Ahed told Sky News. “There was dust everywhere and I didn’t understand where I was.”

Stuck in the rubble, Ahed was disoriented. She called Mona. His mother and cousins ​​rushed to help him. They managed to free her from the rubble, revealing the young Gazouie, alive but with one leg broken and the other in pieces.

“I asked my cousin, 'Is my leg missing?' and he said, 'No, don't look.'”

Her cousins ​​carried Ahed up the stairs to their apartment. There were shots outside.

“There was no surgical equipment,” Ahed recalls. “My uncle took soap and a scrubbing brush from the kitchen and started cleaning my leg… He started crying. Then he cut my leg.

“I remained conscious the whole time, without anesthesia. My only comfort was my cousin, who stood next to me and recited the Quran.”

His uncle Hani saved his life. He also felt compelled to film the proceedings; to show the world what happened to the lives and deaths of the people of Gaza.

“What is this injustice that has happened to us?” he shouted directly into the camera as he cleaned Ahed's wound.

“We have been surrounded for 15 days. I had to amputate my niece's leg without anesthesia. Where is the mercy? Where is the humanity? What have we done to deserve this?”

The decision to upload the video to social media would ultimately precipitate Ahed's journey out of Gaza, to Egypt and ultimately to America.

Four thousand miles away, in the small American town of Aiken, South Carolina, a woman named Wafa Abed was online. Like so many exiled Palestinians around the world, she was deeply affected by the images emanating from her native country.

While scrolling, she came across the video of Hani Bseiso, her niece and the amputation. The Bseisos were unknown to him, but the images had an immediate impact.

“You have to get this girl out,” Wafa told his son Tareq. “You have to do this.”

Tareq Hailat, 27, a medical student, had recently accepted a new part-time position. As an Arab-American, he was consumed by the tragedy of the Israel-Gaza conflict and had begun working for a charity.

The Palestine Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) is an American charity that has a long history of helping vulnerable children in the region. Since the start of this latest conflict, she has tried, initially without much success, to evacuate injured children.

Now, desperate to help Ahed and others he had seen online, Tareq began building a global network of strangers. Despite the enormous obstacles in his path, he pulled all the levers and followed all the leads.

The PCRF's long-established status in Gaza and the West Bank – combined with the drive and determination of this young medical student – ​​began to work wonders.

“I continued to work so that we could remove Ahed,” Tareq said during a Palestinian breakfast at his parents’ home in South Carolina.

“I started contacting my professors and they connected me with different doctors here in the United States. Once that was established, I started connecting with people in Gaza and Egypt.”

It took more than a month and 17 failed attempts to get Ahed out of Gaza.

Israel repeatedly refused him permission to leave. His ambulance convoy was attacked and the vehicle next to his was destroyed.

In Egypt, in preparation, there were passports to apply for and visas to issue.

For Tareq and his new team, this seemed like a logistical and bureaucratic impossibility. He called the Red Crescent daily, sometimes hourly, for two weeks.

“They were asking the Israelis for permission to go up to the north of Gaza to get it. We would never have gotten the green light. In the end, we got it.”

Ahed Bseiso arrived in Greenville, South Carolina on February 17, 2024, when she had just turned 18 years old.

She had never left Gaza before and now found herself in a new world with her sister Mona by her side. The rest of the Bseiso family had to stay behind, stuck in Gaza.

They ended up in Greenville because Tareq was studying medicine there and he knew people who were willing to treat his wounds.

Ahed was sitting in her wheelchair, with her sister, a slight smile on her face, when I first met her.

Like Tareq's mother and millions of others, I had seen the viral video months earlier. I never imagined I would meet the young woman at the heart of it all.

“Marhaba,” I said – Arabic for hello. She responded in English. “Good morning.”

I didn't really know where to start. But she chose to start that fateful day by explaining all of this with courage and composure.

I asked him the question I had been wondering since I first saw the video. Why wasn't she screaming? How the hell did she manage to get out of there?

“The strength came from me,” she replied, “…because I never want to give my occupant the opportunity to be able to kill us and silence us.”

Last week was the final leg of Ahed's journey from South Carolina to Colorado. Strangers obligated to help him every step of the way took him to see a doctor in Denver.

Dr. Omar Mubarak is a leading American vascular surgeon and another remarkable figure making things happen. He was contacted by the PCRF and immediately wanted to help.

Beyond the welcome party he threw in the Denver airport arrivals hall, Dr. Omar had a new prosthetic leg installed. Free, for Ahed.

The morning of fitting started with a smile. Ahed had left her right shoe in Greenville. There would be nothing to put on the new foot. She laughed and we all laughed.

The fitting itself was private – its moment.

But then, as the clinic door opened, came a hesitant step. Then a lot. Ahed walked down the hospital corridor. “It’s great,” she said.

Dr. Omar looked on, smiling, but with a tear in his eye. “She took to it like a fish. She took four steps before we could stop her. Great day. Awesome. She's extremely excited.”

Ahed seemed very grateful to those who helped her, only a handful of whom could be mentioned in this story.

“It’s something I’ll never forget,” she said.

But how did she feel coming to America – a place where she found so much kindness but the country that is the nation's biggest supporter that caused her wounds? It was a delicate but important question.

His answer spoke volumes.

“When you see people happy to see you or trying their best to support you… it's something I'll never forget.

“But the first thing I thought was 'how can I leave Gaza and get treatment in a country that is perhaps – even more than Israel – largely responsible for my condition?'”

In a war that moved so much and hurt so many, I found a young woman who was grateful but also extremely conflicted.

Ahed will now return to South Carolina to continue her recovery. She wants to go home as soon as possible.

“I am happy for this opportunity, but my heart is always with my family in northern Gaza, which is currently the most terrible place on earth.”

The Palestinian Children's Relief Fund (PCRF) has extracted around 100 injured children from Gaza since the start of this latest conflict. Seven of them, including Ahed, came to the United States.

Most were sent for treatment in the region: 47 were transferred to Qatar and 15 to the United Arab Emirates. Many are hospitalized in Egypt. Lebanon, South Africa and Jordan have all agreed to take in patients. Others went to Europe. The UK has not accepted any Gazans.