Overview
- Children evacuated from Al‑Shifa’s neonatal unit in November 2023 returned to Gaza on Monday in a U.N.-organized convoy through Rafah with Palestine Red Crescent teams and nurses escorting them, and families met them at Nasser Hospital.
- Newsrooms give different counts for the group, with Reuters and the Associated Press reporting 11, Al Jazeera and Middle East Eye citing 8, and CBS stating 10.
- Doctors say seven of the roughly two dozen evacuees died in Egypt, and several children remain outside Gaza with relatives.
- The 2023 evacuation followed power cuts during an Israeli siege that shut incubators, prompting the Red Crescent and the World Health Organization to move the infants to Egypt.
- Gaza’s hospitals now lack many medicines, supplies, and reliable power for preterm care, so the children’s follow-up treatment faces serious gaps even with Rafah partly reopened under a U.S.-brokered deal.