Clutching a blown-up surgical glove as a makeshift toy, a Palestinian child is stretchered onto a plane to Abu Dhabi — one of the Gaza conflict’s first evacuees to the United Arab Emirates for urgent medical treatment, AFP reports.
At Egypt’s El Arish airport, near the Rafah border crossing from Gaza, the child is carried carefully from the back of one of six yellow ambulances waiting near the runway.
A hydraulic platform lifts the wheeled stretchers into the back of a plane until eight children in various stages of injury and distress, some accompanied by relatives, are aboard.
The initial group of evacuated children, who arrived in Abu Dhabi early today, are the first of an expected 1,000 who will be airlifted to the UAE for medical help. Among the children, one has a fractured spine and another a broken leg. Others have burns, and one needs urgent treatment for cancer.
Two more with severe injuries did not board and were expected to join the next flight. The humanitarian airlifts for children could now happen daily, an aid official told the news outlet.
