1st group of injured Palestinian kids from war arrives in UAE

Abu Dhabi: The first planeload of Palestinian children wounded in the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip reached the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, part of a pledged relief effort by the country to aid 1,000 children.

The group of 15 people, including children and their family members, made it across the Gaza Strip’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday. They then took a flight to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates.

Young children lay asleep on their moms’ laps as the plane finally landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport. Some of the seats of the plane were removed to make room for the most critically wounded children, who needed to lie on stretchers.

Some of the young had bandaged arms and legs. Others sat quietly next to their parents or relatives. Some traveled alone. The mood was somber and quiet inside the plane. Many of the mothers said they were exhausted.

Twelve-year-old Amr Jandieh, his eyes welling up with tears, said he traveled to the Emirates alone.

“My dad, uncle, and I were talking on the street,” Jandieh said. “My uncle was killed. My dad was injured ... all of a sudden a missile hit and I lost consciousness. I woke up and found myself in the hospital.”

Mohammed Abu Tabikh, 14, was one of the more seriously wounded children on the plane. He suffered injuries to his neck and spine when a car he was traveling in was hit in a strike.

“When I got injured, I felt shock. And then I stopped moving,” he quietly said before being brought carefully out of the plane.

Nabila Mahmoud traveled from the Gaza Strip with her 17-year-old daughter Rawan, who suffered a broken pelvis. Mahmoud said their house was hit by a direct missile and 13 of her family members were killed.

The war, now in its seventh week, was triggered by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel that killed about 1,200 people. The militant group also abducted some 240 men, women and children.

Israel’s ongoing retaliatory military strikes on Gaza has so far killed more than 11,400 Palestinians, two-thirds of them women and children, according to Palestinian health authorities. Another 2,700 have been reported missing, believed buried under rubble.

The UAE a federation of seven emirates on the Arabian Peninsula also home to Dubai has diplomatic relations with Israel following a 2020 recognition deal.

Meanwhile, Patients, staff and displaced people left Gaza’s largest hospital on Saturday, health officials said, leaving behind only a skeleton crew to care for those too sick to move and Israeli forces in control of the facility.

The exodus from Shifa Hospital in Gaza City came the same day internet and phone service was restored to the Gaza Strip, ending a telecommunications blackout that forced the United Nations to shut down critical humanitarian aid deliveries because it was unable to coordinate its convoys.

Israel continued to expand its offensive in Gaza City, with the military warning in a social media post in Arabic that residents of two

neighbourhoods in the east and north and the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya must evacuate for their safety.

It said military activities would be paused briefly to allow them to leave. Earlier in the week, the Israeli defence minister had said troops had completed operations in the west of Gaza City.

Attacks also continued in the south of the Gaza Strip, with an Israeli airstrike hitting a residential building on the outskirts of the town of Khan Younis, killing at least 26 Palestinians, according to a doctor at the hospital where the bodies were taken.

Israel’s military has been searching Shifa Hospital for traces of a Hamas command centre that it alleges was located under the building a claim Hamas and the hospital staff deny - and urging the several thousand people still there to leave.

On Saturday, the military said it had been asked by the hospital’s director to help those who would like to leave do so by a secure route.

The military said it did not order any evacuation, and that medical personnel were being allowed to remain in the hospital to support patients who cannot be moved.

But Medhat Abbas, a spokesman for the Health Ministry in Hamas-controlled Gaza, said the military had ordered the facility cleared, giving the hospital an hour to get people out.

After it appeared the evacuation was mostly complete, Dr. Ahmed Mokhallalati, a Shifa physician, said on social media that there were some 120 patients remaining who were unable to leave, including some in intensive care and premature babies, and that he and five other doctors were staying behind to care for them.

It was not immediately clear where those who left the hospital had gone, with 25 of Gaza’s hospitals non-functional due to lack of fuel, damage and other problems and

the other 11 only partially operational, according to the World Health Operation.

Israel has said hospitals in northern Gaza were a key target of its ground offensive aimed at crushing Hamas, claiming they were used as militant command centres and weapons depots, which both Hamas and medical staff deny.

Israeli troops have encircled or entered several hospitals, while others stopped functioning because of dwindling supplies and

loss of electricity.