The latest batch of evacuees included 13-year-old Amina Ghanem, whose story was brought to the international community’s attention.
Qatar has evacuated the thirteenth batch of wounded Palestinians from Gaza on Sunday as part of its ongoing evacuations under an initiative by Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Qatar’s Minister of State for International Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Lolwah Al Khater announced the latest evacuation on her X page with a video showing the latest evacuees.
The evacuated Palestinians were first taken to El-Arish in Egypt before boarding a Qatari military jet that is designated for medical evacuations. The total number of evacuees has not been publicly disclosed.
“Such life-saving operations do not absolve the Israeli occupation forces and the international community, which failed to stop the aggression on Gaza as part of their legal and humanitarian responsibility to stop the aggression and stop targeting defenceless civilians, especially children, and from deliberately destroying the health infrastructure and capabilities in the Strip,” Al Khater said.
On December 3, Qatar’s Amir launched an initiative to sponsor 3,000 orphans and treat 1,500 injured Palestinians from the Gaza Strip. Under the initiative, the Gulf State is supervising the transfer of the wounded in coordination with Egypt, in preparation for treatment in Doha.
The latest batch of evacuees included 13-year-old Amina Ghanem, whose story was brought to the international community’s attention when she spoke about Israel’s attack on her family with eyes covered in blood.
Palestinian photojournalist Belal Khaled, who first shared the child’s story, announced her evacuation in an Instagram story, showing her being welcomed by Al Khater.
Israeli tanks had crushed Amina’s house while her family were asleep and ran over the house three to four times, killing her father and sister. Amina survived with her brother and sister.
Doctors on social media have since diagnosed Amina and urged the international community to evacuate her to save her eyesight.
The horrors that Amina experienced offered a glimpse of the wider atrocities Israel has been committing on the ground in Gaza since the beginning of the genocidal war on October 7, 2023.
Israel has since killed at least 27,365 people, including more than 17,000 children, and wounded 66,630 others.
The bombardment and field executions have continued for nearly four months across Gaza, with Khan Younis being subjected to increased attacks since last month. Israel continued besieging the Al-Amal and Nasser hospitals in southern Gaza, leaving patients, medics and displaced Palestinians stranded inside the facilities, the Palestinian news agency (Wafa) reported on Sunday.
The attacks on hospitals left only 13 out of 36 hospitals in Gaza, or 36%, partially functional.
Israel has also bombed Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip while targeting the Nuseirat camp “with several artillery shells,” Wafa added.
Mass displacements have been occurring since last month with Israel forcing Palestinians out of Khan Younis in the south to Rafah, closer to the Egyptian border where at least 1.4 million people are already crammed up.
Israeli military chief Yoav Gallant said on Thursday that Israel will expand its ground invasion to Rafah, a move that will eventually leave Palestinians nowhere to go other than neighbouring Egypt where the borders have been closed and entry is heavily restricted.
Israel had forced Palestinians to flee from the north and head to the south on October 12, 2023 when it raided the Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest in Gaza, where tens of thousands were sheltering and receiving treatment.
The United Nations estimated that there are 1.7 million internally displaced persons in Gaza, including 17,000 children who are either unaccompanied or separated from their families.
UNICEF also believed almost all of Gaza’s 1.2 million children are in need of psychological support, twice the pre-war rate.
