Minors wounded in the Gaza war arrive in Spain
Published: Wednesday, Jul 24th 2024, 13:20
Zurück zu Live Feed
A total of 16 seriously ill minors from the Gaza Strip are to be treated in Spanish hospitals. An A400 M air force hospital plane has already flown to the Egyptian capital Cairo to bring the children and young people as well as 27 family members to Madrid, the Ministry of Defense announced on request.
They are patients with serious injuries from the war in the coastal strip, as well as a cancer patient and a patient with a serious heart defect. The 16 children and young people were evacuated from the Gaza Strip to Egypt some time ago.
However, the need for medical aid for civilians in the Gaza Strip and especially for children and young people is huge. According to the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, around 5,000 injured children have been evacuated from the Gaza Strip so far. However, the Rafah border crossing to Egypt has been closed since the beginning of May due to the fighting. As a result, around 10,000 more wounded minors are still waiting to leave the coastal strip for treatment abroad. Only a few have managed to get to Egypt since then. At the end of June, around 20 children suffering from cancer were able to leave the Gaza Strip for Egypt via another border crossing.
According to the health authority in the Gaza Strip, which is controlled by the Islamist Hamas, around 39,000 people have been killed and almost 90,000 injured in the coastal strip since the war began on October 7. The local healthcare system has largely collapsed due to the destruction caused by the war.
The Gaza war was triggered by the unprecedented massacre of more than 1,200 people killed by terrorists from Hamas and other groups in Israel on October 7 last year. Israel responded with massive air strikes and a ground offensive. In view of the high number of civilian casualties and the catastrophic situation in the Gaza Strip, Israel is coming under increasing international criticism.
©Keystone/SDA
German 
English 
French 
Spanish 
Arabic