Israeli authorities say 68 people — 19 sick or wounded children plus their companions — have been allowed out of the Gaza Strip and into Egypt in the first medical evacuation since May, when the territory’s sole travel crossing was shut down after Israel captured it.
COGAT, the Israeli military body responsible for Palestinian civilian affairs, said on Thursday that the evacuation was carried out in co-ordination with officials from the United States, Egypt and the international community.
The children and their companions left the Gaza Strip via the Kerem Shalom crossing, and the patients were to travel to Egypt and further abroad for medical treatment.
The nearly nine-month Israel-Hamas war has devastated Gaza’s health sector and forced most of its hospitals to shut down.
Health officials say thousands of people need medical treatment abroad, including hundreds of urgent cases.
Family members earlier bade a tearful goodbye to the children as they and their escorts left the Nasser Hospital in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younis bound for the Kerem Shalom cargo crossing with Israel.
The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt, the only one available for people to travel in or out, shut down after Israeli forces captured it during their operation in the city early last month. Egypt has refused to reopen its side of the crossing until the Gaza side is returned to Palestinian control.
Six of the children were transferred to the Nasser Hospital from Al-Ahli Hospital in Gaza City earlier this week. Five have malignant cases of cancer and one suffers from metabolic syndrome.
That evacuation was organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO), which could not immediately be reached for comment.
At a press conference at Nasser Hospital on Thursday, Dr Mohammed Zaqout, the head of Gaza’s hospitals, said the evacuation was being conducted in co-ordination with the WHO and three American charities.
Dr Zaqout said more than 25,000 patients in Gaza require treatment abroad, including some 980 children with cancer, a quarter of whom need “urgent and immediate evacuation”.
He said the cases included in Thursday’s evacuation are “a drop in the ocean” and that the complicated route through Kerem Shalom and into Egypt cannot serve as an alternative to the Rafah crossing.
In a post on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, the WHO regional director for the Eastern Mediterranean, Hanan Balkhy, welcomed news of the children’s evacuation, but noted that “more than 10,000 patients still require medical care outside the Strip. Of the 13,872 people who have applied for medical evacuation since October 7, only 35% have been evacuated”.
“Medical evacuation corridors must be urgently established for the sustained, organised, safe, and timely passage of critically ill patients from Gaza via all possible routes,” she said.
Israel’s offensive against Hamas, which runs the Gaza Strip, has killed over 37,700 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its count. Thousands of women and children are among the dead.
The war began with Hamas’ surprise attack into Israel on October 7, in which militants killed some 1,200 people and took another 250 hostage.