Connect with us

Published

on

Warning: This story contains distressing images

To find safety from Gaza, you need first to become the victim of a catastrophic injury and then be lucky enough to be identified, selected and extracted.

That’s one of the many brutal truths from this long war.

I have followed the stories of some of the few Palestinians who have left Gaza for medical care.

Less than 100 children have been granted permissions and temporary visas for the United States to receive treatment since the war began in October 2023.

In all, several hundred children have left Gaza for treatment in that time – most to other Middle Eastern countries. It has not been possible to confirm a precise number but we do know that the UK has not accepted any.

Eight Palestinian children were aboard Royal Jordanian flight 263
Image:
Eight Palestinian children were aboard Royal Jordanian flight 263

A few weeks ago, at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, the largest single group of children from Gaza arrived in America for treatment.

Eight Palestinian children were aboard Royal Jordanian flight 263 from Amman.

The number, tiny though it is, reflects an enormous achievement by the charity that has made this happen – the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF).

But it is also reflective of deep diplomatic and political failures; the fact that it was only possible to extract eight of many thousands who need urgent medical treatment.

The doors into the arrival hall at O’Hare opened to reveal a fleet of wheelchairs each carrying a child bearing the scars of the war they had left behind.

Among them, two brothers who survived the bombing that killed their sister.

Behind them, a boy who lost all his siblings and his arm. He is now his mother’s only child. She travelled with him. She too is now an amputee.

The last to emerge through the arrival door was a dot in her wheelchair.

Rahaf, just two, lost both her legs in an Israeli attack on her home in August, not long after she had learnt to walk.

Both Rafah's legs had to be amputated
Image:
Both Rahaf’s legs had to be amputated

Rafah at home in Gaza
Image:
Rahaf at home in Gaza

All their stories reflect a collective horror. They are the civilian victims of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza which followed the Hamas attacks of 7 October 2023.

The children arrived in America after a massive collective effort involving the PCRF and Shriners – one of America’s largest non-profit children’s hospital networks.

Working with multiple governments they facilitated the extractions.

Israel controls all of Gaza’s borders and has only granted evacuations in rare circumstances, only in exceptional cases and only with one parent or guardian.

After their flight, the children travelled to Shriners Hospitals in different parts of the country – California, Oregon, Illinois, South Carolina, Kentucky and Missouri.

It was in Missouri this week that I spent a day with two-year-old Rahaf and her mother Israa Saed.

Rafah plays in the park near her new home in Missouri
Image:
Rahaf Saed plays in the park near her new home in Missouri

Mother and daughter Israa and Rafah
Image:
Rahaf with her mother Israa Saed

We met at the home of the American couple who have volunteered to be their hosts for their time in the US.

Six months since the bombing of Rahaf’s home and three weeks since she and her mother arrived in America, I’d come to see how a little life was now being rebuilt.

The first thing that hit me as we sat in the host family’s living room was how happy Rahaf now seems.

Her right leg is missing from below her knee and her left leg is almost completely gone – amputated just below her hip.

Yet she was darting around the floor in front of us chasing a blue balloon with shrieks of laughter. Her mum smiled as she watched.

The mood belied the enormity of their experience and the dilemma of their journey.

The family's apartment block before it was bombed
Image:
The family’s apartment block before it was bombed

Israa and Rafah's apartment block as it was bombed in August
Image:
The apartment building engulfed in flames as it was bombed in August

The apartment block after it was bombed
Image:
The apartment block after the bombing

Until this month, Israa and Rahaf had never left Gaza. Now they are in America, without the language and without the rest of their family – Israa’s husband and her two young boys.

“My other two sons are still young and… do I need to stay with my other kids or do I need to come out?,” she said about her dilemma.

“Rahaf needs her mum. I could not let her go [to America] alone. And especially also with my fractures, my elbows, my arms. I was hoping for some treatment for myself.”

Israa was injured in the same attack on 1 August. Both her arms were badly damaged. New X-rays taken since she arrived in America show a section of bone still missing in her right forearm.

An x-ray shows a section of bone still missing in Rafah's right forearm
Image:
Israa still has a section of bone missing in her right forearm

I asked about her family back in Gaza.

“Yes, we do talk but the internet is not the best. We still manage to have some conversations. The question that is always repeated is: ‘when can you come back? When will the little ones get you back? When can we meet again?'”

Israa sobbed. The pain was clear on her face.

“God willing, my wish is for my kids to live safely far from any conflicts and war. Safely. That is my wish.”

We looked at photographs on Israa’s phone of Rahaf in a pink dress before the attack and a video of her walking up the steps of their apartment block.

“She loved to be a princess,” Israa said.

Rafah back in Gaza
Image:
Rahaf back in Gaza

Israa then showed me a photograph of Rahaf on a hospital bed in Gaza a few weeks after the attack looking down at her amputated legs.

I asked if she understands what has happened to her.

“She did ask ‘my legs are destroyed, what happened?'” Israa said they told her it was a rocket. Now, Rahaf avoids the subject. “If we start the conversation, she will change the subject.”

The good news is that Rahaf’s amputations were done well given the situation.

Circumstance has ensured that Gazan medics have become among the best in the world at trauma surgery. But that’s where the care ends in Gaza. The shortage of doctors, equipment and functioning hospitals makes prolonged care impossible.

Amputations require ongoing work from doctors with various skills including orthopaedic surgeons, plastic surgeons, and prosthetists.

Children with lost limbs demand a whole extra layer of care because they are still growing. Rahaf will need new prosthetic limbs frequently as she gets bigger.

Prosthetists estimate that for every death in a war, there are likely to be three times as many surviving amputees. According to the Gaza health ministry the number of dead in the war has now topped 45,000.

According to analysis by the charity Oxfam more children have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli military than in the equivalent period in any other conflict of the past 18 years.

Those numbers give a sense of the number of amputees, adults and children, still inside Gaza.

Rafah

Through pressure from charities and commitments of treatment from hospitals, the United States has admitted a small number of Gazan children, but the key blocker is the Israeli government, which controls access to the strip through all the borders.

Josh Paul is a former US State Department official who resigned last year over the Gaza war.

Speaking to Sky News he said the situation with injured children represents a deep failure of American diplomacy.

“Even on something as humanitarian as saving the lives of children, getting them to critical care, it’s not that America isn’t willing to ask. It’s that America isn’t willing to press,” Mr Paul said.

“And it could be done in a second if they wanted to. If President Biden picked up the phone [to Israel] and said, ‘we are stopping our arms shipments until you let out children, until you let out critically injured children or critically sick children for care, we are not standing by you’.”

On why more hasn’t been done, Mr Paul said: “It’s the political costs… he believed he would pay. I think that is a severe miscalculation.

“I think American public opinion has shifted radically and is going to continue to shift.

“I also think that the geopolitical incentives here have also shifted and there is a cost, a clear cost, that we are paying for our unconditional support to Israel.”

Watch and read our other stories on Gaza’s children:
Stuck in Gaza with the rarest of diseases
Girl with rare disease leaves Gaza
Sky meets teenager whose uncle amputated her leg

Israa, Rafah and Sky correspondent Mark Stone
Image:
Israa, Rahaf and Sky correspondent Mark Stone

The next step for Rahaf is prosthetics. It is the kindness of strangers and their donations that will make all this happen.

Then it will be time for her to walk again. But a reunion with family is, for now, far less certain.

Continue Reading

US

Man who died after being pulled into MRI machine was wearing 9kg weight-training chain, wife reveals

Published

on

By

Man who died after being pulled into MRI machine was wearing 9kg weight-training chain, wife reveals

A man who died after being pulled into an MRI machine in New York was wearing a large weight-training chain around his neck, his wife has said.

Keith McAllister, 61, entered a room at the Nassau Open MRI clinic while a scan of his wife’s knee was under way.

The machine’s strong magnetic force drew him in by the 9kg metal chain around his neck, according to Nassau County Police.

His wife, Adrienne Jones-McAllister, said she had called out to her husband to help her off the table.

“I yelled out Keith’s name, [shouting] Keith, come help me up,” she said in an interview with News 12 Long Island.

She said her husband entered the room wearing the chain, which he uses for weight training.

“I saw the machine snatch him around and pull him into the machine,” Ms Jones-McAllister said as tears streamed down her face. “He died, he lost, he went limp in my arms.”

More on New York

Police said that the accident last Wednesday “resulted in a medical episode” and left Mr McAllister in a critical condition in hospital.

Ms Jones-McAllister said her husband had suffered a series of heart attacks after he was freed from the MRI machine. He was later pronounced dead.

A file picture of an MRI scanner
Image:
A file picture of an MRI scanner

MRI stands for Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The machines use strong magnetic fields and radio waves to create detailed images of the inside of the body.

Due to the magnetic fields, “very powerful forces” are exerted on objects made of iron, some steels, and other magnetic materials, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering says.

It says the forces are “strong enough to fling a wheelchair across the room”.

Read more from Sky News:
Trump diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency
LA nightclub crowd crash may have been intentional, police say

Sky News’ US partner network NBC New York reported that MRI accidents are rare but can be fatal.

It is not the first time someone has been killed by an MRI machine in New York.

In 2001, six-year-old Michael Colombini died at the Westchester Medical Centre when an oxygen tank flew into the chamber, drawn in by the MRI’s 10-ton electromagnet.

Continue Reading

US

Alaska Airlines grounds all flights after IT outage

Published

on

By

Alaska Airlines grounds all flights after IT outage

Alaska Airlines has grounded its planes following an IT outage.

The carrier said it experienced the outage impacting its operations at around 8pm Pacific time on Sunday (4am Monday UK time).

It did not specify the nature of the outage.

“We requested a temporary, system-wide ground stop for Alaska and Horizon Air flights until the issue is resolved,” the Seattle-based airline said in a statement.

Horizon Air is the regional subsidiary operating Alaska Airlines flights.

Alaska Airlines apologised for the ground stop of its flights and warned of “residual impacts to our operation throughout the evening”.

“Please check the status of your flight before leaving for the airport,” it added.

Read more from Sky News:
Man who died in MRI was wearing weight-lifting chain
Trump diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency

Alaska Air Group maintains an operational fleet of 238 Boeing 737 aircraft and 87 Embraer 175 aircraft, according to its website.

In June, Hawaiian Airlines, which is also owned by Alaska Air Group, said some of its IT systems were disrupted by a hack.

The firm said it was still trying to determine the financial impact of the incident.

Continue Reading

US

Several critically injured after vehicle ‘driven into crowd’ in Los Angeles

Published

on

By

Several critically injured after vehicle 'driven into crowd' in Los Angeles

Three people are in critical condition after a vehicle drove into a crowd in Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles Fire Department’s (LAFD) public information officer Captain Adam Van Gerpen told Sky’s US partner NBC News the vehicle hit a taco cart before colliding with a large number of people outside a nightclub.

“Apparently there was a vehicle that had somebody who lost consciousness,” he said. “We have reports that there was a gunshot wound in one of the patients.”

Pictures from the scene in Santa Monica Boulevard, in East Hollywood, show a damaged grey vehicle which has mounted the pavement with debris strewn across the ground.

Sergeant Travis Ward, central traffic division watch commander at the Los Angeles Police Department, said it was too early to say if the incident was intentional and that an investigation was ongoing.

The LAFD said three people are in critical condition, six in serious condition and 19 in fair condition.

This breaking news story is being updated and more details will be published shortly.

More on Police

Please refresh the page for the latest version.

You can receive breaking news alerts on a smartphone or tablet via the Sky News app. You can also follow us on WhatsApp and subscribe to our YouTube channel to keep up with the latest news.

Continue Reading

Trending