Italy is jumping into the breach of providing healthcare to children wounded in the unrelenting Israeli bombardment of Gaza.
A total of one hundred Palestinian children wounded in the war, will be arriving to receive medical treatment in Italian hospitals, the defense ministry in Rome said Wednesday.
The healthcare system has almost entirely collapsed in Gaza after more than three months of devastating Israeli bombardment and fighting in the besieged Palestinian territory.
Just today Reuters reported that, according to Palestinian medics, Israeli tanks had cut off and were shelling targets around the city’s two remaining functioning hospitals, Nasser and Al-Amal, trapping medical teams, patients and displaced people sheltering inside or nearby.
On Wednesday, the Italian ministry announced “the start of the operation for the transport of 100 Palestinian children and their families from the Gaza Strip to Italian hospital facilities.”
The first 30 children are set to arrive within the next few days “with an air force airlift between Italy and Egypt”, the ministry said in a communique.
Another 30 children will arrive at the end of the month on board an Italian military ship, the “Nave Vulcano”, which will soon leave Egypt’s port of El Arish, it added.
The children will be sent on to several Italian cities for care, including Rome, Bologna, Florence and Genoa.
Earlier Wednesday, seven wounded Palestinian children arrived in France for medical treatment, the second such evacuation to the European country after two other Palestinian children arrived late December.
At least 25,700 Palestinians, the majority civilians, have been killed in the Gaza Strip in Israeli bombardments and ground offensive, according to the Hamas government running the territory.
In addition to the lack of medical care that the bombardment has caused, on Tuesday the United Nations warned of a “looming threat of famine” in the territory. By all accounts, the fierce persecution and killing of civilians is a calamity the likes of which may be unprecedented even within the roiled Mideast that has seen repeated wars and military conflicts.
