UAE evacuates nearly 100 injured and sick from Gaza via southern Israel: What we know

ABU DHABI — The United Arab Emirates evacuated 252 people from Gaza on the night of Sept. 11, as part of its ongoing efforts to provide humanitarian aid and medical care for those affected by the conflict in the Strip, which is nearing the one-year mark. 

Among those rescued were 97 critically wounded people who were accompanied by 155 of their family members. Of the total number, 142 were children.

The evacuees boarded the plane from Ramon Airport in the southern Israeli city of Eilat. They made the journey to the Red Sea port city via the Kerem Shalom crossing that links Israel with the Gaza Strip.

This is the UAE's second flight transporting injured persons as well as cancer patients from Israel's southernmost city. The first UAE flight with Gaza children on board landed in February. 

Over 41,000 people have died in the Gaza Strip and over 90,000 have been injured as a result of an ongoing Israeli offensive following the Oct. 7 attack on Israel by Hamas that left around 1,200 dead and 250 taken hostage. 

"This is one of the initiatives for the ones who can fly and for the ones who do get approved to get out," Maha Barakat, a medical doctor and an assistant minister for health and life sciences at the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Al-Monitor. "We bring them here to treat them, and we have a humanitarian city where their relatives can stay … we can look after them until they're well enough to go back." 

Humanitarian efforts

The UAE runs a 100-bed floating hospital moored at the port of El Arish in Egypt, close to the border with Gaza. The UAE also runs a 150-bed field hospital in the Gaza Strip to care for the sick and injured. The UAE's evacuation of the wounded and the sick from Gaza is part of a broader plan by the country's president, Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, to treat 1,000 injured children and 1,000 cancer patients at hospitals in Abu Dhabi.

"We have almost 1,000 already in the United Arab Emirates," Barakat said. "We continue to help. So this is not over yet. There are many patients for whom we are fighting to get approval to get out. Once we get that approval, we will treat them within the health care system in Abu Dhabi."

Barakat said the UAE was trying to assist displaced injured and sick individuals who could not make it to the Egyptian border following the closure of the Rafah border crossing in May.

Maysa, 15, and Yara, 10, were on the flight. Their father, who accompanied them, said the children had lost their eyesight in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip due to Israeli bombardment.

"They were in a school when they were hit along with four other kids in the family," he said, holding up a picture of their brother, who had a visible head injury and did not get approval to leave Gaza.

The family managed the trip via the Kerem Shalom airport to Eilat over two days, he said.