How the lives of the few child amputees allowed to leave Gaza are being rebuilt elsewhere
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
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 Rahaf’s legs had to be amputated
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.
Rahaf Saed plays in the park near her new home in Missouri
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
The apartment building engulfed in flames as it was bombed in August
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.
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.
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.
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, 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.
A driver has knocked down several people on the French island of Ile d’Oleron.
Two people are in intensive care following the incident and a man has been arrested, French interior minister Laurent Nunez said.
Several others were injured after the motorist struck pedestrians and cyclists, he added.
Thibault Brechkoff, the mayor of Dolus-d’Oleron, told BFMTV the suspect shouted “Allahu Akbar” (Arabic for God is Greatest) when he was detained.
Arnaud Laraize, the public prosecutor in La Rochelle, told the Sud Ouest newspaper the 35-year-old suspect “resisted arrest” and was “subdued using a stun gun”.
He said the suspect was known for minor offences such as theft, adding he was not on a list of people considered a threat to national security.
Pedestrians and cyclists were hit on a road between Dolus d’Oleron and Saint-Pierre d’Oleron, he added.
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Police were alerted, with the first calls made at around 9am, according to French media reports.
Mr Nunez said in a post on X that he was heading to the scene at the request of the French prime minister.
At least 66 people have died after Typhoon Kalmaegi struck the Philippines, as footage emerges showing the scale of destruction.
A further 26 people have been reported missing, half of them in Cebu, where floods and mudslides killed at least 49 people, the Office of Civil Defence said.
Six crew members of a military helicopter were also killed when it crashed on the island of Mindanao, where it was carrying out a humanitarian disaster response mission, according to the military.
The powerful storm, locally named Tino, made landfall early on Tuesday and lashed the country with sustained winds of 87mph and gusts of up to 121mph.
Drone footage shows wrecked homes after heavy flooding in Cebu province. Pic: Reuters
Some communities have been wiped out. Pic: AP
‘State of calamity’ in Cebu
Several people were trapped on their roofs by floodwaters in the coastal town of Liloan in Cebu, said Gwendolyn Pang, secretary-general of the Philippine Red Cross.
She said in the city of Mandaune, also in Cebu, floodwaters were “up to the level of heads of people”, adding that several cars were submerged in floods or floated in another community in Cebu.
Cebu, a province of more than 2.4 million people, was still recovering from a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on 30 September, which left at least 79 people dead.
A state of calamity has been declared in the province to allow authorities to disburse emergency funds more rapidly.
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Entire towns flooded in the Philippines after typhoon
Damaged vehicles after flooding in Cebu City. Pic: AP
Pic: Reuters
Fierce winds either ripped off roofs or damaged around 300 mostly rural shanties on the island community of Homonhon in Eastern Samar, but there were no reported deaths or injuries, mayor Annaliza Gonzales Kwan said.
“There was no flooding at all, but just strong wind,” she said. “We’re okay. We’ll make this through. We’ve been through a lot, and bigger than this.”
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Red Cross staff rescue people and dogs. Pic: Reuters
Pic: AP
Hnndreds of thousands evacuated
Before Kalmaegi’s landfall, officials said more than 387,000 people had been evacuated to safer ground in eastern and central Philippine provinces.
The combination of Kalmaegi and a shear line brought heavy rains and strong winds across the Visayas and nearby areas, state weather agency PAGASA said.
A shear line is the boundary between two different air masses such as warm and cold air.
Pic: AP
A boy with a goldfish he caught after a nearby fish farm flooded. Pic: AP
Vietnam gears up for storm
The Vietnamese government has said it was preparing for the worst-case scenario as it braced for the impact of Kalmaegi.
The typhoon is forecast to reach Vietnam’s coasts on Friday morning. Several areas have already suffered heavy flooding over the last week, leaving at least 40 people.
Kalmaegi hit the Philippines as it continues to recover from several disasters, including earthquakes and severe weather over recent months.
Around 20 typhoons and storms hit the Philippines each year, and the country is also often struck by earthquakes and has more than a dozen active volcanoes.
“Follow me and be careful,” says the commander, as he leads us down a narrow path in the dead of night.
The overgrown tract had once been occupied by the Russians, and there are landmines scattered on the side of the path.
But the men with us are more concerned about the threat from above.
Members of a unit in Ukraine’s 3rd Assault Brigade, they run a covert operation from an underground cellar, tucked behind a ruined farmhouse.
And what they are doing in this old vegetable store is pushing the boundaries of war.
“This is the interceptor called Sting,” says the commander, named Betsik, holding up a cylindrical device with four propellers.
“It’s an FPV [first-person view] quad, it’s very fast, it can go up to 280km. There’s 600 grams of explosive packed in the cap.”
The Sting interceptor drone used by the Ukrainians
However, he had not told us the most important thing about this bulbous drone.
“It can easily destroy a Shahed,” he says with determination.
Devastating and indiscriminate drone attacks
Once viewed as a low-cost curiosity, the Iranian-designed Shahed drone has turned into a collective menace.
As Russia’s principal long-range attack weapon, enemy forces have fired 44,228 Shaheds into Ukraine this year, with production expected to rise to 6,000 per month by early next year.
A Shahed-136 drone used by Russia amid its attack on Ukraine, on display in London. Pic: Reuters
The Russians are also changing the way they use them, launching vast, coordinated waves at individual cities.
The damage can be devastating and indiscriminate. This year, more 460 civilians have been killed by these so-called kamikaze weapons.
Russia’s strategy is straightforward. By firing hundreds of Shaheds on a single night, they aim to overload Ukraine’s air defences.
It is something Betsik reluctantly accepts.
Betsik observes the work of the team on in the cellar
Still, his unit has come up with a groundbreaking way to tackle it.
Perched in the centre of the vegetable store, we watch a youthful drone pilot and a couple of navigators staring at a bank of screens.
“Guys, there’s a Shahed 10km away from us. Can we fly there?” asks one of the navigators, called Kombucha.
He had just spotted a Shahed on the radar, but the enemy projectile was just out of reach.
“Well, actually 18 km – it’s too far,” Kombucha says.
“Do you know where it is going?” I ask.
“Yes, Izyum, the city. Flying over Izyum, I hope it won’t hit the city itself.”
Kombucha takes a deep breath.
“It is driving me nuts when you can see it moving, but you can’t do anything about it.”
The chase
The atmosphere soon changes.
“Let’s go. Help me lift the antenna.”
An engineer runs an interceptor drone up to the unit’s ad-hoc launch pad, located on a pile of flattened brick.
“The bomb is armed.”
The drone pilot, called Ptaha, tightens his grip on the controller and launches the Sting into the night sky.
Now, they hunt the Shahed down.
Their radar screen gives them an idea of where to look – but not a precise location.
“Target dropped altitude.”
“How much?”
“360 metres. You’re at 700.”
Instead, they analyse images produced by the interceptor’s thermal camera. The heat from the Shahed’s engine should generate a white spec, or dot, on the horizon. Still, it is never easy to find.
“Zoom out. Zoom out,” mutters Ptaha.
Then, a navigator code-named Magic thrusts his arm at the right-hand corner of the screen.
“There, there, there, b****!”
“I see it,” replies Ptaha.
The pilot manoeuvres the interceptor behind the Russian drone and works to decrease the distance between the two.
The chase is on. We watch as he steers the interceptor into the back of Shahed.
“We hit it,” he shouts.
“Did you detonate?”
“That was a Shahed, that was a Shahed, not a Gerbera.”
Going in for the kill
The Russians have developed a family of drones based on the Shahed, including a decoy called the Gerbera, which is designed to overwhelm Ukrainian defences.
However, the 3rd Brigade tells us these Gerberas are now routinely packed with explosives.
“I can see you’ve developed a particular technique to take them all down,” I suggest to Ptaha. “You circle around and try to catch them from behind?”
“Yes, because if you fly towards it head-on, due to the fact that the speed of the Shahed…”
The pilot breaks off.
“Guys, target 204 here.”
It’s clear that a major Russian bombardment is under way.
“About five to six km,” shouts Magic.
With another target to chase, the unit fires an interceptor into the sky.
Ptaha stares at the interceptor’s thermal camera screen.
The lives of countless Ukrainians depend on this 21-year-old.
“There, I see it. I see it. I see it.”
The team pursues their target before Ptaha goes in for the kill.
“There’s going to be a boom!” says Magic excitedly.
“Closing in.”
On the monitor, the live feed from the drone is replaced by a sea of fuzzy grey.
“Hit confirmed.”
“Motherf*****!”
‘In a few months it will be possible to destroy most of them’
The Russians would launch more than 500 drones that night.
Betsik and his men destroyed five with their Sting interceptors and the commander seemed thrilled with the result.
“I’d rate it five out of five. Nice. Five launches, five targets destroyed. One hundred percent efficiency. I like that.”
Maxim Zaychenko
Nevertheless, 71 long-range projectiles managed to slip through Ukraine’s air defences, despite efforts made to stop them.
The head of the air defence section in 3rd Brigade, Maxim Zaychenko, told us lessons were being learnt in this underground cellar that would have to be shared with the entire Ukrainian army.
“As the number of Shaheds has increased we’ve set ourselves the task of forming combat crews and acquiring the capabilities to intercept them… it’s a question of scaling combat crews with the right personnel and equipment along the whole contact line.”
Betsik speaks to Sky News
Buoyed by the night’s successes, Betsik was optimistic.
“In a few months, like three to five, it will be possible to destroy most of them,” he said.
“You really think that?” I replied.
“This is the future, I am not dreaming about it, I know it will be.”
Photography by Katy Scholes.
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