From Gaza to Geneva: Swiss Doctor Evacuates Injured Children

 Geneva-based doctor Raouf Salti holds 17-month-old Zeina, next to 16-year-old Yussef, both of whom were evacuated from Gaza to Switzerland to receive medical treatment, at Geneva airport, Switzerland, February 12, 2024. (Reuters)
Geneva-based doctor Raouf Salti holds 17-month-old Zeina, next to 16-year-old Yussef, both of whom were evacuated from Gaza to Switzerland to receive medical treatment, at Geneva airport, Switzerland, February 12, 2024. (Reuters)
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From Gaza to Geneva: Swiss Doctor Evacuates Injured Children

 Geneva-based doctor Raouf Salti holds 17-month-old Zeina, next to 16-year-old Yussef, both of whom were evacuated from Gaza to Switzerland to receive medical treatment, at Geneva airport, Switzerland, February 12, 2024. (Reuters)
Geneva-based doctor Raouf Salti holds 17-month-old Zeina, next to 16-year-old Yussef, both of whom were evacuated from Gaza to Switzerland to receive medical treatment, at Geneva airport, Switzerland, February 12, 2024. (Reuters)

When Swiss doctor Raouf Salti realized he could not go to Gaza to help injured children, he decided he would do everything he could to get them to Geneva to receive medical care.

After dealing with swathes of red tape, Salti got permission to have four children, including a 16-year-old who lost a kidney and has already had his leg amputated, cross into Egypt from Gaza and then fly to Switzerland on Monday.

Salti, who went to Egypt to pick them up, waved as he was greeted by his team at Geneva airport with Zeina, a wide-eyed 17-month-old who was rescued from under the rubble in Gaza, in his arms.

"When I saw that the situation kept getting worse, I decided that my mission this time would be to go there and bring them here," said Salti, who has taken part in several international humanitarian trips to Gaza as well as other parts of the Middle East and Africa over the past 14 years.

Salti, a urological surgeon and himself a descendant of Palestinian refugees, had been scheduled to travel to Gaza on Oct. 19 to carry out operations including a planned kidney surgery on a toddler.

But his humanitarian mission, part of his work as founder of an NGO called Children's Right for Healthcare, was called off due to the Israeli offensive launched in the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas gunmen.

The four children who arrived in Geneva on Monday are the second group that Salti has managed to evacuate to Switzerland, bringing their total number to eight. The children have been granted 90-day visas to receive medical care.

"What is important is giving them a normal life, with people, calm, peace and love. A child's life," Salti said after arriving at his office with the children and their mothers.

The four were chosen with help from his contacts in Gaza on the basis that they were well enough to travel and that they could be helped in Switzerland.

Sixteen-year-old Yussef, who lost his left leg and had his kidney crushed in an Israeli attack, is emaciated, weighing less than 30 kg (66 pounds). Doctors in Gaza amputated the remainder of the leg that had been blown off, but he still needs to gain strength and ultimately be given a prosthetic.

Zeina, the 17-month-old, was initially treated at Al-Shifa Hospital, the largest facility in the Gaza Strip, which was raided by Israeli forces in November.

Her tiny left arm, supported by a sling, sustained several fractures that doctors attempted to repair using an external fixation, but the structure had to be removed due to an infection.

"You can't talk about sterile (equipment) there anymore, it doesn't exist," Salti said.



Deadly Israeli Strike in West Bank Highlights Spread of War

Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)
Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)
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Deadly Israeli Strike in West Bank Highlights Spread of War

Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)
Demonstrators clash with Palestinian security forces in Nablus in the West Bank (File photo/Reuters)

The ruins of a coffee shop in the West Bank city of Tulkarm show the force of the airstrike on Thursday night that killed a senior local commander of the militant group Hamas - and at least 17 others.

The strike in Tulkarm's Noor Shams refugee camp, one of the most densely populated in the occupied West Bank, destroyed the ground floor shop entirely, leaving rescue workers picking through piles of concrete rubble with the smell of blood still hanging in the air.

Two holes in an upper level show where the missile penetrated the three-storey building before reaching the coffee shop, where a mechanical digger was clearing rubble.

The strike by the Israeli air force was the largest seen in the West Bank during operations that have escalated sharply since the start of the war in Gaza almost a year ago, and one of the biggest since the second "intifada" uprising two decades ago.

"We haven't heard this sound since 2002," said Nimer Fayyad, owner of the cafe, whose brother was killed in the strike.

"The missiles targeted a civilian building, a family was wiped from the civil registry. What was their fault? ...

"There is no safe place for the Palestinian people. The Palestinian people have the right to defend themselves."

Residents said the strike took place after a rally in the middle of the camp by armed fighters based there. When the rally ended, some went to the coffee shop, Reuters reported.

The Israeli military said the strike killed Zahi Yaser Abd al-Razeq Oufi, head of the Hamas network in Tulkarm, a volatile city in the northern West Bank that has seen repeated clashes between the Israeli army and Palestinian fighters.

It said the attack joined "a number of significant counterterrorism activities" conducted in the area since the start of the war.

ATTACK KILLS FAMILY OF FIVE IN APARTMENT

Local residents said another commander, from the Iranian-backed Islamic Jihad, was also killed but there was no immediate confirmation from either faction.

But Palestinian emergency services said at least 18 people had died in all, including a family of five in an apartment in the same building.

The missiles penetrated their ceiling and the floor of their kitchen, leaving many of the cabinets incongruously intact.

With the first anniversary approaching of Hamas' Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the strike on Tulkarm underlined how widely the war has now spread.

As well as fighting in Gaza, now largely reduced to rubble, Israeli troops are engaged in southern Lebanon while parts of the West Bank, which has seen repeated arrest sweeps and raids, have in recent weeks come to resemble a full-blown war zone.

Flashpoint cities in the northern West Bank like Tulkarm and Jenin have suffered repeated large-scale operations against Palestinian militant groups that are deeply embedded in the area's refugee camps.

"What's happening in Gaza is spreading to Tulkarm, with the targeting of civilians, children, women and elders," said Faisal Salam, head of the camp refugee council.

More than 700 Palestinians have been killed in the West Bank over the past year, many of them armed fighters but many also unarmed youths throwing stones during protests, or civilian passers-by.

At the same time, dozens of Israeli soldiers and civilians have been killed in the West Bank and Israel by Palestinians, most recently in Tel Aviv, where seven people were killed by two Palestinians from the West Bank with an automatic weapon.