'We followed lives of three children surviving war in Gaza. Here's what we found'

Zakaria lives on his own at al-Aqsa hospital where he helps paramedics bring in casualties

Zakaria is 11 years old and lives in Gaza. He reckons he has seen thousands of bodies since the war started.

But at an age when children are typically found in a classroom, Zakaria is volunteering at one of Gaza's few functioning hospitals - al-Aqsa.

As a succession of ambulances ferrying victims of the war between Israel and Hamas pull up outside the facility in the central town of Deir al-Balah, Zakaria clears a way through the crowds to retrieve newly arrived patients and rush them inside for treatment.

Moments later he is running through the corridors of the hospital with a stretcher and later carries a young child inside to the emergency room.

Several of his schoolfriends have been killed since the conflict started and hanging around the hospital means Zakaria witnesses shocking scenes. He says that once, after an Israeli strike, he saw a boy in front of him burn to death in a fire.

"I must have seen at least 5,000 bodies. I saw them with my own eyes," he tells our cameraman.

Abdullah attended the British school in Gaza before the war and does his best to continue studying

Zakaria is one of the children and young people we spent nine months following for our BBC documentary Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.

It's a film that my colleague Yousef Hammash and I co-directed from London, because international journalists have not been allowed by Israel to enter the Gaza Strip and report independently since the start of the war 16 months ago.

To gather the footage and the interviews, we employed two cameramen who live in Gaza - Amjad Al Fayoumi and Ibrahim Abu Ishaiba - communicating with them regularly using messaging apps, internet calls and mobile phone networks.

Yousef and I wanted to make this documentary to show what everyday life is like for Gazan people trying to survive the horrors of this conflict as it unfolded. We finished filming a few weeks ago, on the day the current ceasefire started.

We focused on three children and a young woman with a newborn because they are the innocents in this war, which came to a shaky pause on 19 January when a hostage release deal between Hamas and Israel took effect.

More than 48,200 people have been killed in Gaza during Israel's offensive, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. The military action followed the attacks on southern Israel by Hamas on 7 October 2023 in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 taken hostage.

By and large we filmed in an area of southern and central Gaza earmarked by Israel's army as a "humanitarian zone", where Palestinians were told to go for their own safety. Despite its designation, the zone itself was struck almost 100 times between May 2024 and January this year, according to analysis by BBC Verify. The Israel Defense Forces said it was targeting Hamas fighters operating there.

We wanted to know how children found food, decided where to sleep and how they occupied themselves while trying to survive.

Abdullah, 13, narrates the film. He speaks excellent English having attended the British school in Gaza before the war and does all he can to keep going with his education.

Renad, 10, does a cooking show on TikTok with the help of her older sister. They make many kinds of dishes, even though the war means they can't get the proper ingredients, and have more than one million followers.

We also followed Rana, 24, who has given birth to a baby girl prematurely. She has been displaced three times and lives near the hospital with her two sons and her parents.

Some of the film also looks at how medics fought to keep people alive in al-Aqsa hospital, which was described in January 2024 by British doctors as the only functioning hospital in central Gaza.

That's where we found Zakaria.

Rana gave birth to her baby prematurely and is living in a tent having been displaced three times

Everyone working at the hospital knows the boy. He is, of course, still a child and not a qualified medic but he is always hanging around, waiting for an opportunity to help someone, in the hope he might receive some food or money in return.

Sometimes he helps carry equipment for local journalists, other times stretchers with people injured or dying.

When there is a quiet moment he helps clean the blood and dirt from the ambulances.

There is no school for him to go to and he is the only person in his family making any money. He doesn't stay with them as they have little food or water, he says, and instead lives on his own at the hospital and sleeps where he can. One night it's in the CT scan room, another in the journalists' tent or the back of an ambulance.

There were plenty of nights he fell asleep hungry.

As much as they try, hospital staff can't keep him away from the chaos of caring for casualties.

Zakaria idolises the paramedics and wants to be considered part of the team. One of them, Said, takes him under his wing. Whenever he treats Zakaria as a child, he says, the boy gets upset.

Staff at al-Aqsa made a miniature set of scrubs for Zakaria to wear while helping at the hospital

Other staff see the care and attention Zakaria pays to them and the patients in the hospital and teach him to give someone an IV drip.

In recognition of his efforts, they even make him a miniature set of blue scrubs – which he takes great pride in.

Said tries to ensure the boy still gets a semblance of childhood and in the film we follow them on a trip to the beach.

Sitting under the fronds of a tree branch, Zakaria tucks into the lunch Said has bought. The shawarma, he says, is perfect. Said jokes it's the only time the boy ever "shuts up".

But Said worries Zakaria has seen so much death and destruction that he may never fit in with children his age again.

Zakaria is himself looking beyond childhood.

"I want to be a paramedic," he says. "But first I need to get out of here."

As told to George Sandeman

Watch - Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone is on BBC Two and iPlayer at 21:00 on 17 February (UK-only)