Sick and wounded Palestinian children prepared for evacuation under Gaza ceasefire deal

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(1 Feb 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Khan Younis, Gaza Strip - 1 February 2025
1. Wide of Red Crescent staff moving child patient Mutasem Sammour on stretcher into an ambulance
2. Mid of Mai Sammour, Mutasem’s mother, crying inside ambulance
3. Mid of Mutasem
4. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mai Sammour, mother of child patient Mutasem Sammour:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 2, 3 & 5++
“We have been waiting for two months for this transfer and for the crossing to open. Thank God, they contacted us yesterday to travel with Mutasem. They told us that the destination is Egypt, and we hope that he will improve and receive treatment after his journey with illness and long suffering. We have been suffering for three months.
5. Wide of Sammour and her son inside ambulance
6. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mai Sammour, mother of child patient Mutasem Sammour:
“He suffers severely, severe pain and lack of movement, he does not eat well, the disease is very serious, and one person out of every 5 million people in the world is infected with it. Thank God, we were contacted to be part of the first batch, and we ask God to heal him and heal all patients.”
7. Wide of Hazem al-Fagaawi, father of Mohammad, suffering from a tumor in the bladder, standing with others outside hospital
8. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Hazem al-Fagaawi, father of child patient Mohammad al-Fagaawi:
++PART OVERLAID BY SHOTS 7 & 9++
“I will accompany my son Mohammed, who suffers from a tumor in the bladder. According to doctors, this tumor is very rare for children to get, and he needs regular follow-ups. The transfer request was made more than eight months ago and was rejected (before) by the Israeli side."
9. Various of ambulances outside hospital
STORYLINE:
A group of 50 sick and wounded Palestinian children were set to cross to Egypt for treatment through Gaza’s Rafah crossing on Saturday, the first opening of the border since Israel captured it nearly nine months ago.

The reopening of the Rafah crossing represents a significant breakthrough that bolsters the ceasefire deal Israel and Hamas agreed to earlier this month.

Israel agreed to reopen the crossing after Hamas released the last living female hostages in Gaza.

Gaza's Health Ministry said around 60 family members were accompanying the children.

Mai Sammour, the mother of a child patient, Mutasem, said she hopes her son will be able to receive treatment unavailable in Gaza.

She had been anxiously waiting to evacuate through Rafah Crossing for three months and is finally able to do so due to the ceasefire deal.

"He suffers severely, severe pain and lack of movement, he does not eat well, the disease is very serious," she explained about her son's condition.

Another parent of a child wounded in his lung said that he hopes his son will be successfully treated abroad and then "return to our homeland safely.”

The children are the first in what are meant to be regular evacuations of Palestinians through the crossing for treatment abroad.

Over the past 15 months, Israel’s campaign against Hamas in retaliation for the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023 on southern Israel has decimated Gaza’s health sector, leaving most of its hospitals out of operation.

Care for the population has been crippled, even as tens of thousands of Palestinians were wounded by Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives.

Rafah is Gaza’s only crossing that does not enter into Israel.

Israeli forces closed the Rafah crossing in early May after seizing it during an offensive on the southern city.

Egypt shut down its side of the passage in protest.



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