From Gaza to Geneva: Swiss doctor evacuates injured children
GENEVA: When Swiss doctor Raouf Salti realized he could not go to Gaza to help injured children, he decided he would do everything he could to get them to Geneva to receive medical care.
After dealing with swathes of red tape, Salti got permission to have four children, including a 16-year-old who lost a kidney and has already had his leg amputated, cross into Egypt from Gaza and then fly to Switzerland on Monday.
Salti, who went to Egypt to pick them up, waved as he was greeted by his team at Geneva airport with Zeina, a wide-eyed 17-month-old who was rescued from under the rubble in Gaza, in his arms.
“When I saw that the situation kept getting worse, I decided that my mission this time would be to go there and bring them here,” said Salti, who has taken part in several international humanitarian trips to Gaza as well as other parts of the Middle East and Africa over the past 14 years.
Salti, a urological surgeon and himself a descendant of Palestinian refugees, had been scheduled to travel to Gaza on Oct. 19 to carry out operations including a planned kidney surgery on a toddler.
But his humanitarian mission, part of his work as founder of an NGO called Children’s Right for Healthcare, was called off due to the Israeli offensive launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas gunmen.
The four children who arrived in Geneva on Monday are the second group that Salti has managed to evacuate to Switzerland, bringing their total number to eight. The children have been granted 90-day visas to receive medical care.
“What is important is giving them a normal life, with people, calm, peace and love. A child’s life,” Salti said after arriving at his office with the children and their mothers.
The four were chosen with help from his contacts in Gaza on the basis that they were well enough to travel and that they could be helped in Switzerland.
Sixteen-year-old Yussef, who lost his left leg and had his kidney crushed in an Israeli attack, is emaciated, weighing less than 30 kg (66 pounds). Doctors in Gaza amputated the remainder of the leg that had been blown off, but he still needs to gain strength and ultimately be given a prosthetic.
Zeina, the 17-month-old, was initially treated at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest facility in the Gaza Strip, which was raided by Israeli forces in November.
Her tiny left arm, supported by a sling, sustained several fractures that doctors attempted to repair using an external fixation but the structure had to be removed due to an infection.
“You can’t talk about sterile (equipment) there anymore, it doesn’t exist,” Salti said.
Sixteen-year-old Yussef, who lost his left leg and had his kidney crushed in an Israeli attack, is emaciated, weighing less than 30 kg (66 pounds). Doctors in Gaza amputated the remainder of the leg that had been blown off, but he still needs to gain strength and ultimately be given a prosthetic.
Can't even begin to imagine the hell this young lad has been through, here's praying he will finally get a new lease of life in Switzerland 🙏🦿
Palestinian journalist Belal Khaled spoke to a 13-year-old Palestinian girl whose house was destroyed by an Israeli tank on Monday, killing her father and sister.
At least 25,490 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army since the start of the war on 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Razan al-Rifi lost her father, mother, brother, and sister in an Israeli bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Now she must become the sole caretaker for her younger siblings who were injured due to the bombardment.
Bodies of Palestinian babies who were killed in Israeli air strikes were put in refrigerator trucks as hospitals’ morgues in Palestine’s Gaza ran out of space.
"Gaza has become a graveyard for children."
UNICEF calls for an ''immediate humanitarian ceasefire'' to stop the killing of Palestinian children in besieged Gaza.
Doctors, poets, families, babies: victims of Israel’s war on Gaza
The IDF says it has targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, but thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed
Israel’s military has bombed Gaza for more than two weeks in an unprecedentedly fierce and relentless assault – retaliation for Hamas’s murderous onslaught on 7 October.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, but thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed in strikes that have flattened residential districts. According to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza, more than 4,600 people have been killed, making the conflict the most fatal of the five wars Israel has fought against militants there since 2007.
Information coming out of Gaza – which is under siege – is hard to verify, but here are some of the names and stories of people reported to have been killed.
In Gaza, Palestinian children are writing their names on their arms and legs in fear of being registered as an ‘unidentified person’ if they were to be killed or buried under the rubble by Israeli air strikes.
In many cases, entire families have been killed all at once since Israel began pounding the besieged enclave with air strikes, leaving no one behind to identify those who have been killed.
More than 1,000 people have been reported missing and are presumed to be trapped or dead under the rubble.
"All of our lives we have known nothing but misery. Now with this, we don't know how to go on living."
Israel's war on Gaza: the traumatised Palestinian children.
This is a smart lass who's being realistic about her own life expectancy. Born in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, she can only blame God for it.
In six days of Israeli airstrikes against Gaza, at least 1,537 Palestinians, including 500 children and 276 women, were killed, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.
Occasional firing of rockets at towns and villages in southern Israel continued. The number of fatalities in Israel since the beginning of Hamas' surprise attack has reached at least 1,300, Israel's state-owned Kan TV news reported.
From Gaza to Geneva: Swiss doctor evacuates injured children
GENEVA: When Swiss doctor Raouf Salti realized he could not go to Gaza to help injured children, he decided he would do everything he could to get them to Geneva to receive medical care.
After dealing with swathes of red tape, Salti got permission to have four children, including a 16-year-old who lost a kidney and has already had his leg amputated, cross into Egypt from Gaza and then fly to Switzerland on Monday.
Salti, who went to Egypt to pick them up, waved as he was greeted by his team at Geneva airport with Zeina, a wide-eyed 17-month-old who was rescued from under the rubble in Gaza, in his arms.
“When I saw that the situation kept getting worse, I decided that my mission this time would be to go there and bring them here,” said Salti, who has taken part in several international humanitarian trips to Gaza as well as other parts of the Middle East and Africa over the past 14 years.
Salti, a urological surgeon and himself a descendant of Palestinian refugees, had been scheduled to travel to Gaza on Oct. 19 to carry out operations including a planned kidney surgery on a toddler.
But his humanitarian mission, part of his work as founder of an NGO called Children’s Right for Healthcare, was called off due to the Israeli offensive launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas gunmen.
The four children who arrived in Geneva on Monday are the second group that Salti has managed to evacuate to Switzerland, bringing their total number to eight. The children have been granted 90-day visas to receive medical care.
“What is important is giving them a normal life, with people, calm, peace and love. A child’s life,” Salti said after arriving at his office with the children and their mothers.
The four were chosen with help from his contacts in Gaza on the basis that they were well enough to travel and that they could be helped in Switzerland.
Sixteen-year-old Yussef, who lost his left leg and had his kidney crushed in an Israeli attack, is emaciated, weighing less than 30 kg (66 pounds). Doctors in Gaza amputated the remainder of the leg that had been blown off, but he still needs to gain strength and ultimately be given a prosthetic.
Zeina, the 17-month-old, was initially treated at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest facility in the Gaza Strip, which was raided by Israeli forces in November.
Her tiny left arm, supported by a sling, sustained several fractures that doctors attempted to repair using an external fixation but the structure had to be removed due to an infection.
“You can’t talk about sterile (equipment) there anymore, it doesn’t exist,” Salti said.
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2459326/world
“The tank went over us three or four times.”
Palestinian journalist Belal Khaled spoke to a 13-year-old Palestinian girl whose house was destroyed by an Israeli tank on Monday, killing her father and sister.
At least 25,490 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army since the start of the war on 7 October, according to the latest figures by the Palestinian Health Ministry.
Razan al-Rifi lost her father, mother, brother, and sister in an Israeli bombing of the Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza. Now she must become the sole caretaker for her younger siblings who were injured due to the bombardment.
The death toll now stands at 9,061 with another 32K injured as announced by the Palestinian Ministry of Health
NEVER FORGET.
A four-year-old Palestinian girl is the sole survivor of her family after an Israeli strike claimed the lives of seven of her relatives in Gaza.
Doaa Al-Ajrami lost her mother, father and siblings and is now under the care of her aunt.
Doctors, poets, families, babies: victims of Israel’s war on Gaza
The IDF says it has targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, but thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed
Israel’s military has bombed Gaza for more than two weeks in an unprecedentedly fierce and relentless assault – retaliation for Hamas’s murderous onslaught on 7 October.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) says it has targeted Hamas and Islamic Jihad militants, but thousands of civilians, including children, have been killed in strikes that have flattened residential districts. According to health officials in Hamas-run Gaza, more than 4,600 people have been killed, making the conflict the most fatal of the five wars Israel has fought against militants there since 2007.
Information coming out of Gaza – which is under siege – is hard to verify, but here are some of the names and stories of people reported to have been killed.
More at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/doctors-poets-families-babies-victims-of-israels-war-on-gaza
This is a smart lass who's being realistic about her own life expectancy. Born in the wrong place at exactly the wrong time, she can only blame God for it.
In six days of Israeli airstrikes against Gaza, at least 1,537 Palestinians, including 500 children and 276 women, were killed, according to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry.
Occasional firing of rockets at towns and villages in southern Israel continued. The number of fatalities in Israel since the beginning of Hamas' surprise attack has reached at least 1,300, Israel's state-owned Kan TV news reported.
😥😥😥