France ready to admit Gaza’s children to its hospitals

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France will use all the resources it can mobilise to help evacuate and treat up to 50 children from Gaza in urgent need of care in its hospitals, French President Emmanuel Macron pledged on Sunday.

Israel’s attacks on the Gaza Strip have intensified since Hamas’s surprise attack on 7 October, which killed more than 1,200 people, including 33 children, with Israel’s full-scale military onslaught on the Gaza Strip has since claimed the lives of 11,255 people, including 4,630 children according to UNICEF figures.

Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Chifa, was the target of Israeli raids over the weekend, Mohammed Zaqout, director general of hospitals in Gaza, told AFP, pointing to the more than 30 premature babies who have been evacuated to Egypt.

France will “mobilise all the resources at its disposal” to “help evacuate injured or sick children in need of urgent care from the Gaza Strip to its hospitals”, French President Emmanuel Macron said in a statement released on X Sunday.

“Medical air resources, both civilian and military, will be deployed”, and a new plane will bring “more than 10 tonnes of medical cargo by early next week”.

“In the next few days”, France will also send a helicopter refurbished for hospital support with 40 beds to treat the “most serious” cases and to treat injured civilians “in nearby hospitals”, he added.

France has also made arrangements, including the mobilisation of air resources, to receive up to 50 children in its hospitals “if useful and necessary”, he added.

On X, Macron also reiterated his call for an ‘immediate ceasefire leading to a truce’, adding that the parties to the conflict should resume talks with a view to a two-state solution.

(Hugo Struna | Euractiv.fr)