'I don't want to be a number': Gazans live in fear of dying

The children at al-Aqsa hospital do not think of the dead of Gaza in figures of thousands. Theirs is a more intimate reckoning. It is counted in beloved faces that have vanished into the fire and rubble of the war.

Thirteen-year-old Rama Zaqout was sleeping when an Israeli missile struck the mosque in which she was sheltering with her family.

She woke in hospital to discover that her two-year-old brother Hisham and many other family members were dead.

She lists the names of those killed in a voice that seems detached from the immense loss she has experienced. It is the voice of a child still in shock at the loss of her grandparents, Hashim, Issam and Ni'ma, her aunt Reem, and her cousins Sireen, Riham and Asma. Sireen was pregnant and had a young daughter. That child was also among the dead.