Thirteen Ukrainian children with cancer evacuated to Italy to receive hospital treatment
A group of Ukrainian children with cancer are safe in an Italian hospital after being flown out of their war-torn country to get urgent treatment.
After days of waiting and amid evacuation difficulties, officials and businesses came together to organise a humanitarian mission to pick up the 13 young patients at the border.
They were flown out of Ukraine along with their five siblings and 14 other relatives and landed in Turin, the capital city of the northern region of Piedmont in Italy, on Saturday.
People applaud as children and their families land in Italy for treatment, as well-wishers hold up the Ukrainian and Italian flags and show signs saying "welcome":
The children will be treated at the Regina Margherita Children's Hospital in the city.
Julia, the mother of one of the children with cancer, said after landing in Turin: "Thanks, thank you for your help, because all this is not normal.
"Children in Ukraine - sorry I do not speak Italian well and I am so emotional - in Ukraine (the situation) for children is not normal. There is fear, so much fear for everybody."
Alberto Cirio, president of Piedmont region, said: "Last night these children slept on a bus. In the last few nights, they have slept in a bunker or in a metro station.
"Tonight they are sleeping in a bed, in a state-of-the-art hospital like the Regina Margherita, they are sleeping next to their mother and are being cared for.
"This is what is different (for them), this is the possibility given to each one of us to do something that goes beyond words but becomes a concrete fact."
The humanitarian mission, organised by the Piedmont region with the Ukrainian embassy in Italy, was made possible after Italian businesses provided a bus to transport doctors from Romania to Ukraine via Moldova, along with a plane to fly out the children and their families.
It came as 100 Ukrainian Jewish orphans, who were evacuated from the country, landed in Israel on Sunday.
The children were evacuated from the central Ukrainian city of Zhytomyr by the KKL-JNF organisation, a few hours before two flights carrying around 300 other new Jewish Ukrainians landed.
The Jewish Agency for Israel, a quasi-governmental organisation that manages immigration affairs, said that it had received 5,500 urgent requests by Ukrainian Jews to move to Israel since Russia attacked on February 24.
The group was greeted on the tarmac at Ben Gurion International Airport by Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and several of his Cabinet ministers.
Mikhail, a doctor, said: "We are from the Donetsk region. We are happy to be here already."
Their evacuation comes as Russia broke a second temporary ceasefire designed to allow Ukrainian citizens to escape the war safely. The General Staff said Russians have been targeting humanitarian corridors, taking women and children hostage and placing weapons in residential areas of cities.
Russia is claiming it will hold fire on Monday morning and allow for the opening of evacuation routes out of several Ukrainian cities so civilians can reach safety - but the announcement has been met with skepticism.