Two of 33 premature babies scheduled to be evacuated from Gaza’s Al-Chifa hospital died the night before their evacuation, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday.
• Also read: 29 of 31 premature babies evacuated from al-Khifa in Gaza have arrived in Egypt
• Also read: Hamas’ health ministry announces 12 dead in attacks on a hospital in Gaza
Thirty-three premature babies in al-Shifa were to be evacuated from the Gaza Strip’s largest hospital on Sunday.
“Unfortunately (…) two of these premature babies died that night due to a lack of care,” said WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier during a regular press conference in Geneva.
According to a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), James Elder, three of the 33 premature babies are still in the Emirates Hospital in the southern Gaza Strip.
In addition, 28 others arrived in Egypt on Monday through the Rafah border crossing, the only exit from Gaza to the outside world that is not controlled by Israel. They arrived from Al-Chifa Hospital on Sunday and stopped at Emirates Hospital before leaving Palestinian territory.
In a video conference from Cairo, the UNICEF spokesman said that twenty of the 28 babies evacuated to Egypt traveled without their mothers.
“Seven mothers with eight babies,” he said, adding that two of the babies were twins.
The Israeli army said it “helped facilitate the evacuation of the babies from al-Chifa” on Sunday.
The Israeli army, which is at war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip, launched a raid on al-Khifa last week, claiming it was a base for the Palestinian Islamist movement, which it denies.
The war was sparked by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israeli soil on October 7, which authorities said killed around 1,200 people, mostly civilians. The Israeli army also estimates that around 240 hostages were taken to Gaza by Hamas.
According to the Hamas government, Israeli bombings in the Gaza Strip killed more than 13,300 people, including more than 5,600 children.