After an intense bombardment struck near his home, five-year-old Jad Zohud suddenly lost his ability to speak.

He is not alone. Across Gaza, specialists are reporting a rising number of children who can no longer speak following war-related injuries or psychological trauma.

For some, the cause is physical – head injuries, neurological damage or blast trauma. For others, there is no visible wound. Their silence follows repeated exposure to violence that overwhelms their ability to process or communicate.

Child psychotherapist Katrin Glatz Brubakk, who has worked in Gaza twice with Doctors Without Borders, known by its French initials MSF, describes it as “silent suffering” often hidden beneath the scale of the destruction.