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.
The men’s US Open final has been delayed by extra security measures as Donald Trump’s arrival was met by cheers and boos from fans at Flushing Meadows.
The match between Jannik Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz, the world’s top two players, was pushed back by half an hour in New York on Sunday before Alcaraz won three sets to one.
The US president was greeted with a mix of cheers and boos from early arriving spectators when he waved from a suite at the Arthur Ashe Stadium about 45 minutes before the match began.
Crowds waiting to enter the Arthur Ashe Stadium for the US Open men’s singles final. Pic: AP
President Donald Trump waves as he arrives at the US Open tennis men’s singles final. Pic: AP
Increased security checks at entrances to the grounds and to get into the arena building prompted the US Tennis Association to move the start time to 2.30pm, local time, instead of 2pm.
Organisers said it was “to ensure that fans have additional time to get to their seats.”
A spokesperson for the US Tennis Association said it “was not a request made by the White House”.
Carlos Alcaraz celebrates winning the US Open men’s singles title. Pic: Reuters
Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola. Pic: AP
Despite the change, the 24,000-capacity arena was only about two-thirds full when the first point was played, while thousands of fans still were standing outside the court, waiting in line to enter.
Mr Trump, who is the first sitting president to attend the tournament at Flushing Meadows since Bill Clinton in 2000, was booed again when he appeared for the National Anthem.
Standing up and saluting, the president was shown briefly on the arena’s big screens during the anthem, and offered a smirk that briefly made the boos louder.
Movie star Ben Stiller. Pic: AP
Anna Wintour. Pic: AP
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Always a big celebrity draw, the final attracted, among others, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola, former Vogue editor Anna Wintour, Hollywood stars Ben Stiller and Danny DeVito, director Spike Lee and basketball player Steph Curry.
Donald Trump has signalled his intention to send troops to Chicago to ramp up the deportation of illegal immigrants – by posting an AI-generated parody image from Apocalypse Now on social media.
There were protests in the city, the largest in Illinois, on Saturday night, with thousands of people marching past Trump Tower to demonstrate against possible immigration raids.
That came as the US president ramped up his threats to deploy federal authorities and military personnel in Chicago, as he has done in Los Angeles and Washington DC.
In a post on Truth Social, Mr Trump shared an AI-generated image of himself as a military officer in the movie Apocalypse Now, with the title changed to “Chipocalypse Now” over flames and the city skyline.
The post – a screenshot from X – said: “‘I love the smell of deportations in the morning…’. Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR.”
Pic: Truth Social
Mr Trump signed an executive order on Friday to rename the Pentagon as the Department of War.
“The President of the United States is threatening to go to war with an American city. This is not a joke,” Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, a Democrat, wrote in a post on X, responding to Mr Trump’s post.
“This is not normal. Donald Trump isn’t a strongman, he’s a scared man. Illinois won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”
Mr Pritzker previously said that he believed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids would coincide with Mexican Independence Day festivals scheduled for this weekend and next weekend.
Some Mexican festivals in the Chicago area were postponed or cancelled over the threatened stings.
A protest against threatened immigration raids in Chicago on Saturday. Pic: AP
A military deployment in Chicago has long been reported. Last month, the Pentagon was said to be drafting plans to send the US Army to Illinois.
In a statement responding to that report, originally from The Washington Post, Mr Pritzker said the state had “made no requests for federal intervention” and accused Mr Trump of “attempting to manufacture a crisis”.
Vice president JD Vance said on Wednesday that there were “no immediate plans” to send the National Guard to Chicago.
Read more from Sky News:
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Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
ICE arrests 475 Hyundai workers
On Thursday, ICE agents carried out a raid at a Hyundai car battery plant in Georgia, saying 475 people, mostly South Koreans, were found to be illegally working there.
It marked the largest single-site enforcement operation in the history of the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE.
The day after the raid, ICE posted a video and photos of workers shackled at the wrists, waist and ankles getting on a bus.
South Korean junior foreign minister Park Yoon-joo told a US government official in a phone call that the video release was regrettable.
Seoul’s foreign ministry added the post came “at a critical time, when the momentum of trust and cooperation” between the two countries, forged through their first summit, “must be maintained”.
Britain’s ambassador to the United States will use a keynote speech today to underline the UK-US special relationship – while also attempting to ‘Reform-proof’ his own struggling government.
Lord Mandelson, the architect of New Labour, master of political spin and now Britain’s man in Washington, will use the 2025 annual lecture at Ditchley Park to offer a positive spin on a presidency which has proudly upended norms and frayed alliances.
In the speech, parts of which have been released in advance, Mandelson will describe President Trump as a “risk taker” with an “iron-clad stomach”.
Lord Mandelson was chosen as ambassador by Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer late last year. He is a political appointee rather than a career diplomat.
And with intriguing language he will offer his take on the parallels between Trump and Starmer’s challenges and mandates.
He will say: “I credit President Trump’s political instincts in identifying the anxieties gripping not only millions of Americans, but also far more pervasive Western trends: economic stagnation for many, a sense of irreversible decline, the lost promise of meaningful work…
“These American concerns find their mirror image in British society, where Keir Starmer won an electoral mandate for national renewal which is similar to Donald Trump’s.”
Yet Mandelson delivers the speech at the end of a week when Nigel Farage was in town.
Screaming for his own form of Trump-like national renewal, the disruptive leader of the UK’s top-polling political party – Reform – was in Washington to hobnob in the Oval Office and to tell Congress that Keir Starmer is turning Blighty into North Korea.
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Farage likens UK to North Korea in Congress
Mr Farage enjoys lapping up the limelight in Washington, where he is an old-world conservative celebrity in the new MAGA White House.
His calculation is that the MAGA wave will reach the UK shores soon.
Reform‘s policy platform is a mirror of the Trump agenda in many respects, tweaked accordingly. The administration is happy to support him. There is a MAGA-Reform mutual respect.
And so it is politically savvy or unavoidably necessary for Lord Mandelson, New Labour‘s architect laying the foundations of the current UK government, to proclaim: ‘We respect Trump too.’
The truth is the government, like so many around the world, sees Donald Trump as an infuriating and unpredictable disrupter with the ability to upend norms at the stroke of a Sharpie. But they can’t articulate that publicly.
Instead, the ‘Prince of Darkness’ will cast Mr Trump as the consequence not the cause of the disruption to international systems, even if many argue that he can be both.
As a master of spin, strategy and ruthlessness, Mandelson clearly has an admiration for Trump’s political style and sheer chutzpah.
Lord Mandelson’s speech comes a week before Mr Trump’s UK state visit. Pic: AP
He will tell the Ditchley Park lecture: “The president may not follow the traditional rulebook or conventional practice, but he is a risk taker in a world where a ‘business as usual’ approach no longer works.”
At a time when the Labour government is struggling and feeling the heat from Farage and his disrupters, are these words to be read as a not-so-subtle message to Prime Minister Starmer?
Mandelson is an old-fashioned liberal. He hasn’t the stomach for ‘wokey’ politics or own goals like the arrest of Graham Linehan. Is there a frustration that the political party he built is now messing it all up?
“Indeed, he seems to have an iron-clad stomach for political risk…” he will say of Trump, decrying the tendency of previous presidents to descend “into an analysis paralysis and gradual incrementalism”.
Lord Mandelson may be Britain’s man in Washington now but, more than anyone else to hold the post, he is deeply integrated into the Downing Street machine.
He is tight with Number 10 chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and was inside Downing Street when Friday’s reshuffle took place. A total coincidence I am told.
A week before the president’s state visit to the UK, Lord Mandelson’s speech is designed to steady a special relationship put under pressure by the return of Trump.
“Do we always have identical views?” he will say. “Of course not, we never have. And we are not looking for special treatment. Our alliance exists because it serves both nations’ interests, because the core values of Britons and Americans remain aligned, as the world around us becomes more threatening.”
Lord Mandelson will say Brexit has freed the UK to pursue closer ties with the US. Pic Reuters
Read more from Sky News:
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And, in a shapeshifting manoeuvre that only the original spin doctor could manage, Lord Mandelson, a cheerleading remainer in the EU referendum campaign, now casts Brexit as a liberator.
“Brexit has freed us to pursue closer US ties,” he will say in his speech.
“Britain has the opportunity to use its regulatory freedom and independence from European law to deepen American investment opportunities. This is crucial as, post-Brexit, we need to leverage every advantage we can to spur UK growth and employment.”
The ambassador is expected to concede that pre-referendum warnings of the demise of Britain’s trans-Atlantic clout have not transpired, while maintaining that Brexit has hit the UK financially with a net-loss to its economy.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
They say the British ambassador is the custodian of the US-UK special relationship. This ambassador has seen what the relationship looks like under Trump.
With trademark political gymnastics, he seems now to be both admiring of the Trumpian movement but also anxious that if Britain under Labour doesn’t get its house in order, then it too will get its own Trumpian disrupter.
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