What happened to the Palestinian babies evacuated from Al-Shifa hospital?
ITV News' Lucy Watson went to Egypt to find out what happened to the 28 babies evacuated from a besieged hospital in Gaza last year
The war in Gaza has raged for more than 10 months. The country has been under constant siege, suffering and now starvation threatens, and it is women, children and newborns in the Strip who are disproportionately bearing the burden of the hostilities, both as casualties and in reduced access to any healthcare. More than half of Gaza’s population are children.
Back in November, ITV News reported on the evacuation of 28 babies from the besieged Al Shifa hospital, to safety in Egypt. I have been to Israel to cover this war and often wondered what happened to them so I went to Cairo to find out.
Some are still in hospital, some are being cared for in a children's centre, others have been reunited with relatives, but some are completely alone in the world, their families - so far - untraceable.
I was taken to the New Administrative Capital Hospital, just outside the city, to meet Mostafa, or Abu Halima (son of Halima), as he is also known. He was a joyous little boy who'd had the most devastating start to his life.
When he was just 7 days old, a rocket hit his home in North Gaza, killing his father, his two little brothers and his grandpa. His mother Halima died 18 days later.
Amna Mohammed Nafe Gamal Abd Radbo is his grandma, who is now with him. She wept with me in the hospital room they are living in, some 9 months since his arrival.
She said: "Halima's death broke me, I've lost everything.
"It's shattered all my dreams. Mostafa is deprived of his mother's love, his brothers' kindness, and everything good in the world, and he lost his eye.
"What is there to keep me strong and to stand on my feet. Thank God for Mostafa. He is my sweetheart."
The missile strike blinded Mostafa in his right eye and propelled his tiny body onto their neighbour’s roof.
"A paramedic heard a baby scream, they ran up the building's stairs and found Mostafa bleeding and injured," Amna added.
Mostafa will have his right eyeball replaced with an artificial one, in the next few days. It is purely a cosmetic operation, he will never be able to see out of it.
"I am so afraid. I don't know what to do for him, only God knows what is his fate.
"Mostafa is growing, I don't know what to tell him - where is his eye, his mother and his siblings?
"I want him to have a bright future, for his mother and brothers to live on through him. I want him to grow up to be a scientist and to help the whole world," Amna told me.
When I was there, Amna showed Mostafa a photograph of his mother. She kissed it and tried to teach her grandson how to say "Mama," a word he will never use. Mostafa is among the most vulnerable and defenceless from Gaza, paying the highest price in this war.
The journey - back in November - from Gaza to Cairo was a voyage into the unknown, riddled with risk. It took 6 hours to reach a hospital. Four children didn't survive. Bilal Tabasy was a nurse from Gaza who travelled with them.
"I was very worried. The babies needed oxygen and there wasn't any. The babies were supposed to be in incubators, but there weren't any," Bilal said.
He accompanied the babies to Egypt, leaving his own wife and son behind. I asked him why he volunteered to do that.
"How could I say no? This is my job. The babies were almost dead. We wanted to save their lives.
"Even now when I think about going home, I think - how can I leave these children? I hope to stay in touch with them all my life. To tell them, I was with you," he said.
The New Adminstrative Capital Hospital has only been open for a year, and the premature babies from Gaza were its very first patients on the neonatal ward. But the possibility of survival when they arrived was very slim.
Neonatal Consultant, Dr Khaled Ahmed Roushdy, said: "Most of them were suffering respiratory distress, sepsis, dehydration, infection, or traumatic injury. When I saw them I was very sad. Their chances of survival were less than 30%."
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Dr Roushdy cared from them from the start. He took me to the unit where they were all initially looked after, and introduced me to a little girl still being cared for there. She was one of the 28 too. She doesn't have her own name, but is called "Bent Sanaa," daughter of Sanaa.
That is her mother's name but not a single member of her family has been found. She is completely alone in the world, and alone struggling with a disability after she suffered a cardiac arrest at 6 months old, and was deprived of oxygen.
She is doing well now, but holds trauma that will live with her forever.
Four babies have returned home to Gaza with a relative, before the Rafah crossing was closed. Six others are with their mothers in Egypt. The government has found them temporary homes. Living in one such apartment are Ayat who is 27, and Hala who is 25. They didn't know each other before the war.
Hala's daughter Masa weighed just 600g when she was born, but she wasn't allowed to stay with her in Al-Shifa hospital at the time, because of the fighting. She couldn't even visit her there, and the hospital was evacuated. Masa was taken to Egypt without her knowing. It took her four months to locate her here. She thought she'd been killed.
"I was so happy to get here, to the New Capital Hospital," Hala told me.
"But when I arrived they said, 'come and see your daughter in the incubator.' I had to tell the nurse - I don't know what she looks like. I've never seen her. This war has destroyed us, in every way," she said.
For these 2 young mothers, Egypt is safe but it's not home.
Ayat explained: "I have mixed emotions. I am happy the girls have had such good medical care here, but so sad their father isn't with us. It is very difficult. He hasn't seen his babies for 8 months."
Ayat then tried to call their father Ismael, in Khan Younis. The connection was weak and brief.
Ayat immediately put one of the girls on the phone.
"Here is Dahab. Yes, Dahab is here. They are both fine today, thank God. We miss you Ismael. Hopefully God will bring us back together," she said on the call.
Ayat came to Egypt with only the clothes on her back. Her husband wasn't allowed to leave.
Our cameraman inside Gaza knows Ismael, and spoke to him. He's been forced to live in a camp. Ismael used to be a successful engineer and is now so ashamed of where he is living and sleeping, that he didn't want us to film there. He didn't want any chance his wife would see.
Ismael told us: "I take just one day at a time but there is no meaning to my days since the 7th October. I am so afraid normality will never return and this will be permanent. I am scared I won't be able to get to my children for a long, long time."
For eight other children, their struggles are different. They are being cared for at a state-supervised children’s centre, and their health is thriving, but they are yet to be reunited with any family member.
All but one has a relative who has been contacted and now knows where they are, but they cannot get out of Gaza. One little boy has nobody. No-one related to him has been found, which begs the questions, who will be responsible for their care and what will happen to them when this war ends? Questions, even the centre's director didn't have an answer for.
"Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity and the Ministry of Health will decide what is best for the children. The best plan and the best place," Hayam Baligh Hamza, director of the National Kafala centre said.
"As long as they are with us, we will give them the best care possible, but their future is not clear, we don't know what will happen," he added.
These children have grown and strengthened in Egypt but they have no idea where their journey will take them next. The consequence of a war they had no hand in.
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