The key facts

  • More than 450 Palestinian amputees are receiving assistance and prosthetics through the Restoring Hope Society initiative in Amman and Gaza
  • Three teenagers told AFP about being wounded in 2025 and amputations after unsuccessful treatment
  • The father of one of the patients reported surgeries without anesthesia in Gaza hospitals

Assistance initiative in Amman

According to AFP, more than 450 Palestinian amputees are receiving medical care and prosthetics at a center in Amman and in Gaza under an initiative of the Jordanian organization Restoring Hope Society. At the center in Amman, the agency's correspondent spoke with several teenagers who lost limbs during the war in Gaza.

Mahmoud Abu Nusair, 15 years old

Fifteen-year-old Mahmoud Abu Nusair said that before his injury he loved football. According to him, on October 31, 2025, during the ceasefire agreed upon that same month, he was looking for firewood in Deir al-Balah in the central part of the Gaza Strip when a bullet hit him in the right leg. Due to Gaza's devastated healthcare system, when the injury worsened, he had to undergo an amputation below the knee. He told AFP that he first screamed, but after seeing people with amputated arms and legs around him in the hospital, he agreed to the surgery. After being wounded, he had to wait about half an hour for a horse-drawn cart that took him to Al-Aqsa Hospital, and then he spent two weeks at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis in southern Gaza. He also recalls the sports equipment and five balls lost when his house was destroyed.

Zuhdi Abu Shanab, 17 years old

Seventeen-year-old Zuhdi Abu Shanab said he lost his entire right leg in a strike on September 8, 2025, in which, according to him, nine people were killed and 28 wounded. He said he had stopped to talk to a friend on his way to the store to buy groceries for his mother, and lost consciousness when the strike hit the building next to them. A week later, he said, doctors discovered an infection in an artery of his leg: three veins and three arteries were damaged. The surgery to restore the blood vessels failed, and the leg was amputated. 'The war destroyed us and tore us away from friends... nothing is left,' he told AFP. At the same time, he hopes for improvement and dreams of returning to Gaza, where his mother, brothers and sisters are waiting for him.

Abd al-Rahman Rihan and his family

Abd al-Rahman Rihan lost the ability to walk when the family home in Jabalia in northern Gaza was bombed on the morning of January 12, 2025. He and his father were severely wounded and went through several hospitals in Gaza, where, according to Abd al-Rahman, they underwent 'severe and painful surgeries.' Three of his brothers were also wounded. His father, 42-year-old Imad Rihan, who lost his left leg, said he had to 'undergo some surgeries without anesthesia in Gaza.' 'This war was very hard for us,' he said, adding that everything that can be told or seen about the war is merely a drop in the ocean compared to what they witnessed with their own eyes.