Faisal first appeared in an interview with Al Araby TV last month where he recounted the horrifying moment he witnessed Israeli occupation forces murder his pregnant mother.
Qatar evacuated the 21st batch of wounded Palestinians from Gaza, including five-year-old Faisal Al Khalidi and his brother, Adam, while reuniting others with their families.
Lolwah Al Khater, Qatar’s Minister of State for International Cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, announced the evacuation on Thursday morning.
“What pleased us, despite the difficult situation, was the reunion of a number of families on this trip, which took place on board a medical evacuation plane from the Emiri Air Force,” Al Khater said on X.
The Palestinians were evacuated as part of an initiative by Qatar’s Amir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani to sponsor 3,000 orphans and treat 1,500 injured Palestinians from the Strip. Qatar has evacuated more than 1,500 people from Gaza.
Al Khater confirmed that the latest batch includes five-year-old Faisal Al Khalidi and his brother Adam Al Khalidi, whose tragic story was quick to spread all over social media.
Faisal first appeared in an interview with Al Araby TV last month where he recounted the horrifying moment he witnessed Israeli occupation forces murder his pregnant mother in Gaza City on December 21, 2023.
Faisal himself suffered injuries to his legs and stomach.
“They entered our living room while we were at school and shot my mother in her stomach while she was pregnant,” he told the Qatar-based media outlet at the time.
While announcing the arrival of Faisal and Adam, Al Khater stressed that no effort will absolve the Israeli occupation of its legal and moral responsibility for all these horrific crimes.
“How many Faisal’s and Adam’s have not made it? How many of them died? How many of them have been orphaned? How many of them lost an eye or a limb?” the top Qatari official said on X.
“The numbers and types of injuries that we are witnessing in the Gaza Strip and what arrives from them are extremely horrific,” she added.
The Qatari official also highlighted the brutality of the Israeli occupation’s attacks on Gaza’s medical sector, including the latest Al-Shifa Medical Complex massacre.
“This brutal occupation, in addition to targeting children, is keen on restricting access to medicines and is deliberately targeting the health sector as we saw recently in the tragedy of the Al-Shifa Medical Complex,” she said.
Last month, Israel carried out a deadly two-week raid at Al-Shifa, the largest hospital in Gaza, trapping around 7,000 displaced people, patients and medics. Some managed to evacuate the hospital, others were arrested by occupation forces, and hundreds remained trapped inside.
Following their withdrawal from the hospital on Monday, hundreds of bodies were found at the facility and its surroundings. Israeli forces burned down the entire building while destroying a temporary cemetery set up by citizens.
Gaza now has only 10 partially functioning hospitals out of an initial 36, according to the United Nations’ latest flash update.
Medics on the ground have been racing against time to treat wounded Palestinians under Israel’s non-stop attacks and shortage of medical supplies under the complete Israeli blockade.
Since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023, Israel has killed more than 33,000 people in Gaza, including 484 health workers, while wounding more than 75,500 others.
From these figures, at least 26,000 are children, meaning Israel has killed just over two percent of Gaza’s child population within six months, Save the Children said on Wednesday.
Since the end of February, the war has created 20,000 orphans, according to researchers from the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights.
Almost all children in Gaza, who represent more than one million, are in need of mental health assistance and psychosocial support, according to estimates by UNICEF.
