DRIFTING in and out of consciousness in her Gaza hospital bed last week, Mona al-Ashkar seemed only dimly aware that her mother was willing her to lose her fight for life.

“Please die, give up, don’t live,” muttered Raeda al-Ashkar at the bedside.

Then she prayed aloud for her daughter’s death. “Dear God, give her martyrdom,” she cried. When she thought Mona could hear her, she whispered in the teenager’s ear and urged her to say the Shahada, the Muslim declaration of faith.

Mona’s left leg was sliced clean off and her left arm paralysed when a shell struck the United Nations school at Beit Lahiya where her family had taken refuge on the final day of Israel’s attacks on Gaza last Saturday. Her two cousins, aged five and seven, were killed and her youngest brother, also aged five, was burnt.

In her mother’s eyes, Mona, 17, would be better off dead than enduring a life of disability in a society that offers little hope for such a girl.

Her father is unemployed, the family has no money for specialist medical care and there is little prospect of her falling in love or finding a young husband. If she marries, the groom will almost certainly be someone much older who may take her on as a second wife in an act of charity.

“Is there a mother who doesn’t love her daughter?” said Raeda, 32, when asked why she had begged Mona to succumb to her wounds.

“She’s my eldest, she was my everything, but I wished her dead to spare her the pain of her injuries, the bleakness of her future and my own helplessness at not being able to look after her.”

Raeda suffers from a debilitating heart problem and relied on Mona to look after her two brothers and three sisters. “Now I’m worried I can’t carry her, serve her or take care of her in my condition,” she said.

Of the 1,330 Palestinians who died during Israel’s attacks, most are said to have been civilians and about 400 were under 18. Thirteen Israelis - 10 soldiers and three civilians - were killed after Israel launched its assault on December 27 to stop Hamas, the Islamist group that controls Gaza, firing rockets over the border.

Some children were left to fend for themselves. Amira Qurum, for example, waited four days for help after missiles struck her family’s street.

According to Amira, she was with her sister, Ussmat, 13, and brother Alaa, 12, when the first explosion shook their home and they heard their father scream. The children ran outside, where they saw him and a neighbour lying dead.

Amira sent her brother and sister for help while she stayed with the bodies but moments later both children were killed when a second missile struck.

“It was suddenly silent,” she said. A third missile that landed nearby left her with a serious leg injury and she hauled herself back into the house just in time to miss the fourth.

Amira said she had made bandages from her trousers, applied them to her leg and knocked on the doors of 13 houses to appeal for help. All were empty so she huddled beneath a tree for the night. Finally she broke into an unoccupied house belonging to a television journalist. He found her in a critical condition three days later and drove her to hospital. There she was reunited with her mother Abeer, who had been told she was dead.

“Even when they issued a death certificate I had a feeling in my heart that she was alive somewhere,” her mother said.

As for Mona, she had recovered enough to speak briefly at the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City on Friday evening, but was struggling to comprehend what had happened to her.

“I have no future now,” she said. “I used to dream of finishing my education, becoming a maths teacher, marrying and bearing children. Who would consider a girl in my situation? How can I marry without a leg?”

Additional reporting: Sara Hashash, Diyaa al-Kahloot

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