Wounded Palestinian children evacuated to Egypt as Rafah crossing reopens

Around 50 sick and injured Palestinian children were transported to Egypt for treatment through Gaza’s Rafah crossing on Saturday, the first opening of the border since Israel captured it in May last year.

Israel approved the reopening of the crossing after Hamas released the last living female hostages in Gaza after the completion of the fourth batch of prisoner exchange. According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, around 60 family members were accompanying the wounded Palestinian children.

Mai Sammour, mother of a child patient, Mutasem, said she hopes her son will be able to receive treatment unavailable in Gaza.

For three months, Sammour had anxiously waited for her son to be evacuated through the Rafah crossing.

“He suffers severely, with severe pain and lack of movement; he does not eat well; the disease is very serious,” she explained about her son’s condition.

Another parent of a child who suffers from lung cancer said that he hopes his son will be successfully treated abroad and then “return to our homeland safely.”

The children are the first in what is meant to be regular evacuations of Palestinians through the crossing for treatment abroad.

Israeli forces closed the Rafah crossing nearly nine months ago after seizing it during an offensive on the southern city. Egyptian authorities shut down their side of the gateway in protest.

Mediators of the ceasefire agreement, including Egypt, see the reopening of the crossing as a significant breakthrough that strengthens the truce Israel and Hamas agreed to in January after 15 months of deadly fighting.

Israel’s campaign against Hamas in retaliation for the militants’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel decimated Gaza’s health sector, taking nearly all of Gaza’s hospitals out of operation.

Care for the population has been crippled, even as tens of thousands of Palestinians were wounded by Israel’s bombardment and ground offensives.

Rafah is Gaza’s only passage that does not enter into Israel and is also being used as a gateway for humanitarian aid into the enclave.