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.
Sir Keir Starmer has condemned Russia’s Christmas Day bombardment of Ukraine, saying the hail of missiles and drones was “bloody and brutal”.
The prime minister lamented that there was “no respite even at Christmas” for Ukrainians, who spent the morning sheltering in metro stations as bombs rained down on their cities.
Russia’s defence ministry said it carried out a “massive strike” on energy facilities that it claimed supported Kyiv’s military.
Volodymyr Zelenskyy also condemned the attack, saying Russia was seeking to plunge his people into darkness.
“Putin deliberately chose Christmas,” he said on Wednesday. “What could be more inhumane?”
In the east, Kremlin forces claim to have captured the settlement of Vidrodzhennia as they continue to make territorial gains.
People take shelter at a metro station during an air raid alert in Kyiv. Pic: Reuters
‘Christmas gift to Ukraine’
Regions across the country reported missile and drone strikes as Ukrainians spend another holiday season facing attacks on their power infrastructure.
Kyiv’s military said it downed 59 Russian missiles and 54 drones, but others made it through their air defences.
Strikes in Kharkiv wounded six people and left half a million in the region without heating, as temperatures hovered just a few degrees above zero.
Firefighters work in the wreckage of homes in Kharkiv. Pic: Reuters
“Kharkiv is under massive missile fire. A series of explosions rang out in the city and there are still ballistic missiles flying in the direction of the city. Stay in safe places,” Kharkiv mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
In the capital, residents faced blackouts while in Dnipro region one person was killed.
Dnipropetrovsk Governor Serhiy Lysa said the Russian army is trying to destroy the region’s power system.
Sophia Square, Kyiv, on Christmas Eve. Pic: Reuters
Ukrainians, marking their second Christmas since changing to celebrate on the same day as the West, sheltered in underground metro stations as the deadly salvo of missiles soared towards them.
“Russia’s Christmas gift to Ukraine: more than 70 missiles and 100 drones,” US ambassador Bridget Brink said. “For the third holiday season, Russia weaponises winter.”
Read more:
Putin: Russia should have invaded ‘earlier’
Protests in Slovakia after PM meets with Putin
A military chaplain conducts a Christmas Eve mass for soldiers on the front line. Pic: Reuters/72nd Mechanised Brigade
Four dead in Kursk region
In the east, Ukrainian soldiers celebrated Christmas by candlelight as they ate together near the frontline.
Fighting continues to be tough in Donbas, as Russian forces push forward and make steady gains.
On Wednesday, Russia’s defence ministry said its forces had taken the settlement of Vidrodzhennia.
Soldiers eat by candlelight on Christmas Eve near the front line. Pic: Reuters/33rd Separate Mechanised Brigade
Across the border, in Russia’s Kursk region, four people were killed and five injured in the town of Lgov after Ukrainian shelling, the region’s acting governor said.
“A five-storey residential building, two single-storey residential buildings and a single-storey beauty salon were seriously damaged,” Alexander Khinshtein wrote on Telegram.
Pope calls for peace talks
In the Vatican, Pope Francis mentioned the war in Ukraine directly during his Christmas Day message, calling for “the boldness needed to open the door to negotiation”.
Speaking to thousands of people from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, he said: “May the sound of arms be silenced in war-torn Ukraine!”
He also called for “gestures of dialogue and encounter, in order to achieve a just and lasting peace”.
Dozens are feared dead after a passenger plane carrying 67 people crashed in Kazakhstan, the country’s emergencies ministry said.
Authorities say 27 people survived the Christmas morning crash, including three children.
The Azerbaijan Airlines flight was en route from Baku in Azerbaijan to Grozny in Russia, but was rerouted due to fog.
It crashed near the city of Aktau, in the west of the country.
Emergency services work at the scene of the crash. Pic: Reuters
A video believed to capture the moment of impact shows the aircraft plunging towards ground at speed, and a resulting ball of flame.
Pictures from the crash site show the wrecked tail section of the Embraer 190 plane, with emergency services working around it.
More than 50 rescuers are at the scene, where a fire has been extinguished, Kazakhstani authorities said.
It’s not yet clear what happened that caused the plane – which was carrying 62 passengers and five crew – to crash.
Flames seen as the plane crashes. Pic: Reuters TV
Read more from Sky News:
Olympic snowboarder killed in Switzerland
Hong Kong issues arrest warrant for activist, 19, in UK
Survivors are being treated at a nearby hospital.
Azerbaijan Airlines said the aircraft had been forced to make an emergency landing at Aktau airport.
Russia’s aviation watchdog said in a statement that preliminary information suggested the pilot had decided to make an emergency landing after a bird strike.
Ramzan Kadyrov, an ally of Vladimir Putin and leader of Chechnya, expressed his condolences and said those being treated in hospital were in an extremely serious condition and that he and others would pray for their rapid recovery.
World
Bethlehem’s Christian community struggles to celebrate amid ongoing Gaza war and West Bank tensions
The sense of hollowness of the Church of the Nativity is deeper than absent tourists.
The chants and prayers are pain-stricken and desperate.
Down in the manger by the enshrined spot where baby Jesus was said to be born, a priest solemnly swings incense into the corners.
Bethlehem’s Christian community struggles to celebrate amid ongoing war in Palestine
There is no beautifully-lit tree in the square outside for the second year in a row. Even in their homes, the Palestinian Christian community in Bethlehem is struggling to celebrate.
The empty spaces and lack of tourism are the shadow of 14 months of war in Gaza and a daily reminder of the ongoing devastation.
And around their family homes, Israeli settlements in the West Bank – illegal under international law – are inching closer.
‘Our country is shrinking’
“Normally we spend Christmas in Bethlehem and Jerusalem but this year there are no celebrations because of what is happening with the war. It is not nice to celebrate while people are dying,” says Alice Kisiya.
Alice is from Beit Jala, Bethlehem. For five years, her family have waged legal battles with settlers over their generational home.
“Each Christmas we had demolition because each time they come and demolish. Last year, we were celebrating Christmas there and they came and demolished our small tent,” says Alice.
She and her family are waiting for a Supreme Court ruling in January on whether they can return.
“Our country is shrinking. As Palestinian Christians, we cannot really have our freedom to move freely and it’s getting worse.”
Her words resonate as we drive along the West Bank wall on the edges of Bethlehem.
A stark reminder of the political divide that is tearing through the Holy Land.
‘It seems destiny of Holy Land is to stay divided’
On the other side of the wall from the sacred site where Jesus was born is where he was crucified in Jerusalem.
We hear that the procession of the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem is soon arriving through a checkpoint inside the wall into Bethlehem to the Church of Nativity.
A crowd of eager Catholics are waiting for him by Rachel’s Tomb, a sacred site for Orthodox Jews.
School children visiting the tomb are ushered off the street by elders aware of the arriving procession.
They start to sing defiantly as older students are forcefully removed from the road by Israeli police.
There is a hushed sense of anticipation and awe from those waiting for Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa to arrive from the Church of Holy Sepulchre – where Jesus was crucified – to the Church of the Nativity, where he was born in refuge.
“This is an important more than a thousand-year-old tradition,” says Tony Marcos, Dean of the Catholic Action Foundation.
As a Palestinian resident of the West Bank, Tony is not permitted to make the procession between the two holy sites.
“It seems the destiny of this Holy Land is to stay divided and these are difficult times we are living in,” he adds.
“Christmas is the season of love and the season of hope. There is big pain and there is instability – a lot of sacrifices and a lot of blood,” he says.
Tony Marcos
‘We want next year to be full of light’
The anxiety seems to dissipate as Cardinal Pizzaballa arrives.
He shakes hands with a queue of people eager to get close to the leader of the Church they cannot visit.
“This Christmas, we want people not to lose hope. It is possible to break down the hatred, the division, the contempt and the lack of justice and dignity we are experiencing here,” says Cardinal Pizzaballa.
“The prayer is to raise our gaze and to look forward, not backwards. We want the next year to be full of light – lighted in the darkness.”
Read more from Sky News:
How child’s phone call started Christmas tradition
Fighting continues in northern Syria despite deal
Pierbattista Pizzaballa
This year, the thousand-year-old tradition is more powerful than ever.
“The meaning [of this crossing] is that it is possible. Even when there are enormous and difficult walls, it is possible to pass them.”
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