Egypt’s Health Ministry Spokesman Hossam Abdel Ghaffar said on Sunday that the country is receiving an average of 40-50 injured Palestinian children from the Gaza Strip.
Abdel Ghaffar said 39 percent of the cases coming from the Gaza Strip are children who were either wounded in the Israeli strikes or are suffering from tumors for which they haven’t received treatment in over a month.
In an interview with Egyptian television, he said 25 percent of the injured Palestinians received in Egypt are women.
Egypt is cooperating with other countries to transfer injured Gazans, mainly children, to its territories through the Rafah crossing.
The World Health Organization evacuated 31 premature babies from Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, the territory's largest, where they were among more than 250 critically ill or wounded patients stranded there days after Israeli forces entered the compound.
The plight of Gaza's hospitals is at the focus of a battle of narratives over the war's brutal toll on Palestinian civilians, thousands of whom have been killed or buried in rubble since the six-week-old war was sparked by Hamas' Oct. 7 rampage into southern Israel.
UN bodies were able to safely evacuate the babies, who were in critical condition, from Shifa to a hospital in southern Gaza, and plan to transport them to a hospital in neighboring Egypt. Four other babies died in the two days before the evacuation, according to Mohamed Zaqout, the director of Gaza hospitals.
Over 250 patients with severely infected wounds and other urgent conditions remain in Shifa, which could no longer provide most treatment after it ran out of water, medical supplies and fuel for emergency generators amid a territory-wide blackout. Israeli forces battled Palestinian militants outside its gates for days before entering the facility last Wednesday.
Israel’s army said it had strong evidence supporting its claims that Hamas maintained a sprawling command post inside and under the hospital’s 20-acre complex, which includes several buildings, garages and a plaza.
