Hundreds of seriously ill children from Gaza will be evacuated to the UK for treatment by the NHS, as part of a new plan due to be announced within weeks, according to a report.
Up to 300 young people will enter the UK for free medical care, a scheme which will run in parallel with another similar operation run by the Project Pure Hope group, a senior Whitehall source told The Times.
Since the war began in October 2023, only three children from Gaza have been issued medical visas for the UK, under the Project Pure Hope scheme – which is funded entirely by private donations.
The news comes amid a crisis of starvation in the ravaged Gaza strip, where partial and complete Israeli blockades on aid have been behind more than 160 malnutrition-related deaths including 92 children, health authorities in Gaza say.
Ted Chaiban, Unicef’s deputy executive director for humanitarian action and supply operations, said on Friday that more than 320,000 young children are at risk of acute malnutrition, after a recent trip to Israel, Gaza and the occupied West Bank.
The malnutrition indicator in Gaza has “exceeded the famine threshold”, Mr Chaiban said in a statement.
Last month, prime minister Sir Keir Starmer promised to evacuate badly injured children. He wrote in The Mirror: “I know the British people are sickened by what is happening. The images of starvation and desperation in Gaza are utterly horrifying.
“We are urgently accelerating efforts to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance — bringing more Palestinian children to the UK for specialist medical treatment.”
More than 100 MPs have signed a letter calling for the government to fast-track the scheme, The Times reports.
Labour backbench MP Stella Creasy said: “The commitment we all share to help these children remains absolute and urgent — with every day, more are harmed or die, making the need to overcome any barriers to increasing the support we give them imperative.
“We stand ready to support whatever it takes to make this happen and ask for your urgent response.”
Israel denies there is widespread starvation and says that where there is significant hunger in the strip it is a result of the theft of aid by Palestinian militant group Hamas, and of failure by the UN to successfully deliver aid.
But Unrwa, which was once the largest provider of humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, says it has been entirely sidelined. Secretary-general Philippe Lazzarini said on Friday that the group has 6,000 trucks loaded with aid stuck waiting outside Gaza Israel to give it the green light to enter.
Earlier on Saturday, witnesses and medics said Israeli forces killed 10 people after opening fire near two aid distribution sites run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation as crowds of hungry Palestinians again sought food.
The violence came a day after US officials visited a GHF site and the US ambassador called the troubled system “an incredible feat”. The GHF denies accusations by UN officials that the killings are partly a result of its aid distribution practices, and says no Palestinians have been killed on its sites.
Another 19 people were shot dead as they crowded near the Zikim crossing from Israel in the hope of obtaining aid, said Fares Awad, head of the Gaza health ministry’s ambulance and emergency service.
Hamas said on Saturday it will carry on fighting until an independent Palestinian state is established in a fresh rebuke to a key Israeli demand to end the war in Gaza.
The militants said Hamas would not stop “armed resistance” until an “independent, fully sovereign Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital” is recognised.
Israel considers the disarmament of Hamas a key condition for any deal to end the conflict, but Hamas has repeatedly said it is not willing to lay down its weapons.
