‘Mama, I’m tired – I want to die’: Israel’s strikes in Gaza leave a generation of Palestinian children traumatized

Mimicking the motion of combing locks of hair with a brush, Sama Tubail stares at her reflection in a mirror and begins to cry.

“I’m just so sad there isn’t a single strand of hair to comb with my brush,” Sama told CNN with her head in her hands. “I hold the mirror because I want to brush my hair: I really want to brush my hair again.”

For the eight-year-old, the movement brings back memories of a life before October 7, 2023 – when she had long hair and played outside with her friends in northern Gaza’s Jabalya. But since then, Sama and her family have been among the estimated 1.9 million Palestinians forcibly displaced from their homes, fleeing first to the enclave’s southern Rafah region…