Israel has delayed the evacuation of sick children in Gaza

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

We have an update now. Israel has allowed severely wounded and seriously ill children to leave Gaza. They will get medical treatment outside that territory. This evacuation was planned for Sunday but was delayed. Israel blocked it after an unrelated attack far to the north over the weekend. NPR's Jane Arraf reports from Beirut.

JANE ARRAF, BYLINE: One hundred and fifty people boarded buses to cross into Israel for a United Arab Emirates aid flight, according to aid officials. It wasn't clear, even to aid groups involved in the process, how many of those were patients and how many were relatives accompanying them. The patients are almost all children, severely wounded in Israeli airstrikes or suffering from life-threatening disease.

SARAH BEN-TARIFITE: On a daily, hourly basis, we will have mothers begging and pleading for help, requesting basic necessities or some form of medical assistance for themselves or their children.

ARRAF: That's Sarah Ben-Tarifite, co-founder of the U.K.-based Children Not Numbers, which helped with the evacuations. Her group had warned that the delay was further risking the children's lives. Israel, which says it is targeting the militant group Hamas, has destroyed or severely damaged most of Gaza's hospitals. WHO, the U.N. health agency, says more than 10,000 people in Gaza - many of them children - need urgent medical treatment. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a Palestinian British surgeon who has operated in Gaza, says for patients, time is critical.

GHASSAN ABU-SITTAH: These children's wounds cannot wait long to be reconstructed. What can be a salvageable limb becomes a limb that needs amputation if it's left long enough without treatment.

ARRAF: After a legal challenge from the group Physicians for Human Rights in Israel, Israel's Supreme Court has ordered the government to present by next week a detailed plan for ongoing evacuations. The prime minister's office did not respond to an NPR request for comment. Gaza's health system was struggling even before the war started last October. Until May, Israel had allowed out about 5,000 children, women and elderly men for medical treatment. But in May when Israel moved into Rafah, it stopped almost all evacuations. Aid officials say only a cease-fire and a reliable system of medical evacuations will help.

Jane Arraf, NPR News, Beirut.

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