Reporter Writes About Breaking Down Over Children Killed In Gaza

Reporter Breaks Down Over Children Killed In Gaza
Palestinian girls who were wounded in an Israeli strike on a compound housing a UN school in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, wait for treatment at the Kamal Edwin hospital in Beit Lahia where victims from the attack were brought early on July 30, 2014. Israeli bombardments early on July 30 killed 'dozens' Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 16 at a UN school, medics said, on day 23 of the Israel-Hamas conflict. AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS (Photo credit should read MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)
Palestinian girls who were wounded in an Israeli strike on a compound housing a UN school in Jabalia refugee camp in the northern Gaza Strip, wait for treatment at the Kamal Edwin hospital in Beit Lahia where victims from the attack were brought early on July 30, 2014. Israeli bombardments early on July 30 killed 'dozens' Palestinians in Gaza, including at least 16 at a UN school, medics said, on day 23 of the Israel-Hamas conflict. AFP PHOTO / MAHMUD HAMS (Photo credit should read MAHMUD HAMS/AFP/Getty Images)

This is how Sara Hussein, a Middle East correspondent for Agence France Presse, described what it has been like for her to report on the killing of hundreds of Palestinian children in Gaza:

"I've seen dead children before, but never like during this war in Gaza. Never so many, never so often."

Hussein, who shared those thoughts in a blog post on Wednesday, is just the latest journalist to reflect on the toll that the bloodshed in Gaza has taken on her psyche. British journalist Jon Snow wrote that he was "deeply scarred" by what he'd seen there. ABC's Alexander Marquardt told HuffPost about the experience of seeing "children and babies crushed to death in their homes or targeted in airstrikes."

Like them, Hussein's mind lingered on all those children. She wrote about how she was reduced to tears as she watched staffers in a morgue handled the bodies of dead children:

It was hard to remain composed in the morgue as the staff flitted around the three children, and a fourth who had been transferred after dying at another hospital. I slipped inside before the scrum of journalists entered, and I stood quietly in the corner as the team worked and three family members inside swung between anger and extreme pain. I continued to take notes and observe, but I cried as I did so. And when I wrote about it later, I cried again.

Read the full post here.

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