‘She couldn’t move her mouth’: Baby suffers burns on more than half her body in Israeli airstrike
Ivana Skayki and her sister were injured in an Israeli airstrike on her hometown in south Lebanon as they prepared to flee. Their injuries were so severe they had to be transferred to Lebanon’s only specialist burns unit.
Lying in her hospital bed, wearing a yellow t-shirt covered in lions, leopards and toucans, little Ivana Skayki is the very definition of innocence.
Her soft, imploring eyes stare back at you, as if to question what she’s doing there. She’s not quite two years old, so all she understands is the pain.
Warning: This story contains images of a child with serious burns.
Nearly half her tiny body is covered in burns – from her head right down to her toes.
Her horrific injuries are the result of an Israeli airstrike on her hometown of al Aliyah in southern Lebanon on 23 September.
Ivana’s family had just packed their bags and were about to flee north when the missile hit.
Her mother, Fatimah, was preparing breakfast in the kitchen and escaped serious injury. But her daughters were upstairs on the balcony and were quickly engulfed in flames.
“Everything was on fire, there was black smoke,” Fatimah recalls.
“I only managed to find my children from their screams.
“It was a very, very painful day. And I’m still in this nightmare.”
Fatimah and her husband Mohammad had to jump from a window with Ivana and her seven-year-old sister Rahaf in order to escape.
Warning: Graphic images showing serious burns below
They managed to reach the city of Tyre, where the girls received treatment. But their injuries were so severe they had to be transferred to Beirut’s Geitaoui Hospital – home to Lebanon’s only specialist burns unit.
“Honestly, I didn’t have any hope she would survive,” Fatimah admits, looking at Ivana and wiping away a tear.
“She was in a very bad situation. She couldn’t move her legs, her mouth, nothing.”
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After weeks of treatment, including multiple skin grafts, Ivana’s head and forearms are still wrapped in gauze, and much of the skin on her legs is red, raw and peeling.
But she is past the worst, and will soon join Rahaf in being discharged.
For the medics here, though, the work never stops.
Ever since Israel escalated its aerial campaign against Hezbollah six weeks ago, the influx of burn victims has been relentless.
“There’s been so much pressure on us,” Hadi Mushref, a nurse in the burns unit, told Sky News.
“We’ve been working so hard, even during our days off, to cope with the overcrowding.”
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The hospital has tripled the capacity of the burns unit to try to meet demand, by setting up extra beds on new floors.
But despite their best efforts, they can’t save everyone. One man was recently admitted with fourth-degree burns to 90% of his body.
“We do everything for these patients, but sometimes it’s not enough,” Ali Hamadeh, another nurse, said.
Israel says it doesn’t intend to harm civilians and claims Hezbollah uses them as human shields by basing fighters in residential areas.
Israel’s strikes in Lebanon have killed more than 2,500 people over the past year. In Israel, 69 people have been killed by Hezbollah projectiles.
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Syria did not immediately confirm the news.
In Gaza’s Khan Younis, an Israeli strike killed at least eight Palestinians on Sunday, including four children and a woman, Gaza’s Hamas-led health ministry said.
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Palestinian officials said an Israeli drone strike on Saturday hit a clinic in northern Gaza where children were being vaccinated for polio, wounding six people including four children. The Israeli military denied responsibility.
The war began on 7 October last year, when Hamas-led militants stormed southern Israel, killing around 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting another 250.
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The Israeli military has since killed over 43,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities, who do not say how many were combatants, but say more than half were women and children.
