Foreign Secretary Urged To Directly Intervene To Help Injured Children Out Of Gaza

Layla Moran, Parliament's only Palestinian MP, has written to Foreign Secretary Lord David Cameron asking him to directly intervene to facilitate the urgent evacuation of two severely injured children from northern Gaza.

Teenage brother and sister, Rafiq and Rafif, were both severely injured when their house in Gaza was bombed on 29 January. 11 members of their family, including their mother and siblings, were killed. 14-year-old Rafif has had her foot amputated and Rafiq, 16, had his shoulder crushed and has lost his right leg below the knee, as well as all the flesh from his buttocks. Forced to sleep on his side for weeks, he has developed terrible bedsores as a result.

Israeli authorities have not allowed the children's father back into Gaza, as he was on a business trip before the Hamas attacks on Israel on 7 October, so Rafiq and Rafif have been left without any family in the basement of Al Shifa hospital in northern Gaza, the area under the heaviest bombardment.

The siblings featured in a Channel 4 News report from the hospital, where local journalists have been able to film inside. "Please get us out of here, because this place is no longer Gaza, it's no longer a land to live or breathe in," Rafif pleaded.

In the letter to the foreign secretary, seen by PoliticsHome, Lib Dem MP and foreign affairs spokesperson Moran asked Cameron to step in and personally speak to Israeli authorities about allowing the children to leave Gaza.

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"These children are not safe. Rafif and Rafiq present no threat to Israeli forces. They are children who have just lost their mother. We need to get them out of northern Gaza and to safety urgently," Moran wrote.

"Every organisation that has been