Football on ruins: Gaza’s orphans find refuge on the pitch
Key takeaways
- Orphaned by an Israeli attack, a 16-year-old Gaza boy uses football to survive trauma amid the ruin of Palestinian sports.
- “I was sitting safely with my parents and my two older brothers … I was buried under the rubble for about 10 minutes,” Mohammed told Al Jazeera. “It was pure suffering.”
- Mohammed’s grandmother managed to dig him out of the wreckage of the home, and the next thing he remembers is waking up in his neighbour’s house on a ventilator. “I survived by a miracle,” he said.
Why this matters: an international story with cross-border implications worth tracking.
Orphaned by an Israeli attack, a 16-year-old Gaza boy uses football to survive trauma amid the ruin of Palestinian sports.
xwhatsapp-strokecopylinkgoogle Add Al Jazeera on Googleinfo Mohammed Eyad Azzam, 16, is the sole survivor of an Israeli air attack that killed his family [Screengrab/Al Jazeera]By Mohammad Mansour Published On 10 May 202610 May 2026Sixteen-year-old Mohammed Eyad Azzam says he was a “pampered” child before an Israeli air attack in Gaza killed his immediate family, leaving him as the sole provider for his elderly grandmother.
Mohammed was at home on the morning of October 11, 2024, with his parents and siblings in the Jabalia refugee camp, northern Gaza, when without warning an Israeli warplane struck, bringing his family’s multistorey building down on top of them.