A mother whose son lost a leg in a bombing in Gaza has said the offer to receive medical treatment in Ireland was a \u201cgolden opportunity\u201d.<\/p>\n
Mohammed, aged six, is one of 19 children who have been evacuated from Gaza to receive treatment in Ireland since December 2024.<\/p>\n
His mother Buchra Abdul-Bari said her family moved from Gaza City to Rafah, and then on to Khan Yunis in southern Gaza in 2024.<\/p>\n
It was really the survival call… The woman on the phone) said ‘Take your time and think and call me again’. I told her, ‘Stop, I have the decision now, yes, go ahead. What should I do now?’… I came to Ireland last May, and honestly, it was the golden opportunity to me<\/p>\n
Buchra Abdul-Bari<\/p>\n
Buchra said they were in a tent in Khan Yunis, in what was meant to be a safe area, when their tent was hit by a missile.<\/p>\n
She said they were all injured, but her husband and her youngest son were the most severely hurt.<\/p>\n
She ripped her shirt to wrap around her husband\u2019s leg when her son Mohammed called to her.<\/p>\n
\u201cMohammed said \u2018mum, look at me\u2019 and I lifted him and his leg fell down from my arms,\u201d she told the Press Association.<\/p>\n
She said his face began to go yellow and his lips were turning blue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knocked on many tents, no one can come and help me. So I knocked (into) my neighbour, I begged him to help me, and I convinced him finally, and he came with his bike.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe put Mohammed in the wooden box in his bike, and he went to the hospital \u2013 around two hours on the bike.<\/p>\n
\u201cI said to him goodbye, but I told him, \u2018Please, Hamoudi, try your best not to leave me alone. I can\u2019t live without you\u2019. I kissed him and left him with my neighbour.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said she went back to her husband and asked him to \u201cbe strong\u201d and \u201ctry your best to stay\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe water truck came suddenly, and I talked to the driver.<\/p>\n
I buried my husband’s body with my son’s leg, and went automatically to the hospital to spend the time with Hamoudi, so I didn’t have the time to breathe, to get condolence from people<\/p>\n
Buchra Abdul-Bari<\/p>\n
\u201cMe and the driver lifted my husband and we put him in a very, very narrow area beside the water tank \u2013 imagine that, a dying person.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said when she got back to the tent, she noticed her son Zainaldeen had shrapnel in his chest, her daughter Kinzy was injured and she herself had injuries across her body.<\/p>\n
She brought her children to hospital and was told her husband had died.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat time, it was like throwing me from the heavens to the ground. I went in a shock for 41 days \u2013 no words, silent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI buried my husband\u2019s body with my son\u2019s leg, and went automatically to the hospital to spend the time with Hamoudi, so I didn\u2019t have the time to breathe, to get condolence from people.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe spent four months in the hospital, then we moved to the tent again and were still going to the hospital.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no (facilities), no beds, nothing in the hospital. They\u2019re moving you from death stage to life stage and throwing you out \u2013 \u2018you can do whatever you want now, you survived\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n
Buchra said that almost a year later, she and Mohammed were evacuated to Egypt to receive treatment for a damaged nerve in his right leg, but there is no nerve medication or treatment in Egypt.<\/p>\n
It was after three months in Egypt that she was offered treatment for her son in Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really the survival call,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
It reflects the values of responsibilities, the values of (humanity), I learn from the Irish people lots of things. So I’m really happy that I am in this community, especially this community. It wasn’t just a survival place, I felt like I am in my family place, in my second home<\/p>\n
Buchra Abdul-Bari<\/p>\n
\u201c(The woman on the phone) said \u2018Take your time and think and call me again\u2019. I told her, \u2018Stop, I have the decision now, yes, go ahead. What should I do now?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI came to Ireland last May, and honestly, it was the golden opportunity to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ireland has committed to evacuating 30 paediatric patients from Gaza in response to a request from the World Health Organisation (WHO) that EU nations respond to the region\u2019s acute healthcare needs.<\/p>\n
Israel launched a military offensive in Gaza in response to a Hamas-led attack in October 2023 \u2013 in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage \u2013 which has ravaged the region.<\/p>\n
Over 70,000 people in Gaza have been killed and multiples more injured or left at risk of starvation in what the Irish Government has called a genocide.<\/p>\n
Three waves of evacuations of Palestinian children to Ireland have taken place since December 2024, in a programme involving engagement between several Irish and international organisations.<\/p>\n
So far, 19 paediatric patients from Gaza and 84 family members have come to Ireland from Egypt in December 2024 and May 2025 and from Jordan in October 2025.<\/p>\n
Buchra said that when she first travelled to Ireland, she had to leave her other three children \u2013 her 14-year-old daughter Ghazal, 12-year-old son Zainaldeen and eight-year-old daughter Kinzy \u2013 with their 80-year-old grandmother in Gaza, where they \u201cstruggled to survive\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day, I lost connection with them, and after 10 days I called them again, and they said that they displaced from place to place, they spent three nights in the street without a tent because it was torn.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnother time they had nothing to eat, they lived for 10 days on dirty water.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has been an absolutely amazing experience to work with all of these people and to see the professionalism, the dedication, the emotion of it all, to see patients who are arriving from… To see them land into our beautiful country, and to see them welcomed, and to see them get the care that they need, has been fantastic<\/p>\n
Dr Turlough Bolger<\/p>\n
She said that while he was separated from his siblings, Mohammed stopped eating.<\/p>\n
When they were reunited in October he was \u201cover the moon\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cTheir reunification made us, all of us, in a different place, (on) a different planet.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said of what they had been through: \u201cIt\u2019s the worst period of time in my life. I struggled to be the woman which I am now and keep struggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt wasn\u2019t easy at all. You support your children and you need to be supported, but you don\u2019t have the luxury to break down.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is my faith. This is my life. They are now on my shoulders, so I should be everything to them. And yes, I really love them, I need them beside me.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that she now feels that she and her family \u201cbelong\u201d in Ireland and that she had \u201cfound my way\u201d in Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cI appreciate each effort done by everyone, each name, each title, from the biggest one to the smallest one, the Irish community, the Irish authorities and the government, the ministries, the hospitals, the schools, everything is perfect.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt reflects the values of responsibilities, the values of (humanity), I learn from the Irish people lots of things.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019m really happy that I am in this community, especially this community. It wasn\u2019t just a survival place, I felt like I am in my family place, in my second home.\u201d<\/p>\n
An event was held at Children\u2019s Health Ireland in Temple Street before Christmas where staff ran through the success of the programme and spoke about the cooperation between partner agencies including the Red Cross, the HSE, various Irish governmental departments, the WHO, and the Jordanian and Norwegian embassies.<\/p>\n
After the presentation, Mohammed and his three siblings were given Christmas gifts by the staff.<\/p>\n
Head of the Medevac Ireland programme Dr Turlough Bolger said the evacuations involve going through hundreds of WHO files to find the right patients to bring to Ireland to receive care, but would not displace Irish patients.<\/p>\n
He said they had treated injuries and conditions ranging from amputations and traumatic injuries, to newborn infants born with congenital heart conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019d love to see that this would be the first of many paediatric medical evacuations,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt has been an absolutely amazing experience to work with all of these people and to see the professionalism, the dedication, the emotion of it all, to see patients who are arriving from \u2013 we\u2019ve seen the pictures \u2013 a place where it\u2019s like a moonscape, that kind of Armageddon-type situation.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo see them land into our beautiful country, and to see them welcomed, and to see them get the care that they need, has been fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A mother whose son lost a leg in a bombing in Gaza has said the offer to receive…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235487,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[103,397,396,61,60],"class_list":{"0":"post-235486","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235486\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}