GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Two teams of men in wheelchairs jostled for control of a ball in the Saad Sayel gymnasium in downtown Gaza City, as the two clubs, Al-Salam and Al-Asdiqa’, competed Aug. 22 in the fifth annual Wheelchair Basketball Tournament, which kicked off Aug. 15 and ends in early October.
In cooperation with the Palestinian Paralympic Committee and the Palestinian Union of Wheelchair Basketball, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) have organized a fifth annual tournament to offer physically disabled Gazans a chance to play basketball. The games resumed after an 18-month hiatus resulting from the COVID-19 outbreak in February 2020 and the May fighting between Palestinian factions in Gaza and Israel that resulted in the death of 258 Palestinians and wide destruction of infrastructure and houses.
The May conflict claimed the lives of five disabled people, four men and one woman. Another 46 people were left with disabilities, including six cases of amputations, according to statistics of the Ministry of Health released June 23 on the dead and wounded during the last conflict in Gaza.
According to the latest data available from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics issued Dec. 3, 2019, there were 93,000 persons with disabilities in Palestine, including 48,000 living in the Gaza Strip.
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