Medics wheel a wounded Palestinian man into a hospital in the southern Gaza Strip town of Rafah. He was wounded in an Israeli attack which took place in January of 2009. (Hatem Omar, Maan Images)

Yahya Abu Saif, 20, smiles lopsidedly as his brother steers his wheelchair along the narrow, rutted alley to his home.

It is nearly six months since an Israeli missile strike on a mosque left him close to death. His right leg was amputated and his left side left paralysed by shrapnel that pierced his skull.

When the BBC visited him in February, the trainee teacher struggled to speak even a few despairing words as he gazed ahead into a life of dependence on others.

"I was so sad," he says. But now he is regaining some use of his left side and says he is "hopeful" about the future.

Some 5,000 Palestinians were injured in Israel's 22-day military offensive in Gaza in December and January. The health ministry, run by the Hamas administration, says 680 of them will suffer life-long disabilities.

Bathroom problem

But in Gaza, damaged by the fighting and subject to a crippling Israeli blockade, the path to rehabilitation is strewn with obstacles.

Yahya now comes home from hospital at weekends. "The biggest problem is the bathroom," says his mother. Down six steep concrete steps, through a narrow, splintering door and round a corner, the toilet is a hole in the battered floor tiles.

The only wage earners in the family are two of Yahya's eight brothers, both Hamas policemen.

Thirteen people live in the five room house. They say they can afford to eat, but not well. A local organisation has offered to build a special bathroom for Yahya.

But they say they cannot get the necessary materials. Building materials are virtually banned from entering Gaza, as Israel says Hamas could use them to build smuggling tunnels and weapons storage facilities.

Al-Wafa hospital, Gaza's only specialist rehabilitation hospital - which is treating Yahya - is also feeling the strain. Broken glass and concrete fragments litter the corridors in its state of the art new building, which contains the coastal strip's only hydrotherapy pool.

It has never been used.

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