As the Israel-Hamas war rages, medical mercy flights give some of Gaza's most vulnerable a chance at survival

Gaza's Hamas-run Health Ministry says the war with Israel has killed nearly 20,000 people. It has also hammered the Palestinian territory's health care system. A World Health Organization official said Thursday that in the decimated northern half of the enclave, there were "actually no functional hospitals left."  

Even in the south, most hospitals are overcrowded and many have been heavily damaged. But for the vast majority of patients, including civilians caught in the crossfire, there is no way out of Gaza. But the United Arab Emirates has pledged to evacuate up to 1,000 injured children and 1,000 cancer patients by plane.

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To collect, care for and ferry to safety some of Gaza's most desperately ill, a commercial Boeing 777 jet was fitted with state-of-the-art medical equipment and staffed by a team of experienced doctors and nurses, creating a hospital like no other.

CBS News was on board the most recent so-called mercy flight, along with dozens of patients who were granted rare permission to leave Gaza through the Rafah border crossing to get to Al-Arish airport in northeast Egypt.  

Some were so sick a cargo lift had to be used just to get them on board the aircraft. The patients were among the most seriously ill in Gaza, all of whom had suffered untold horrors just to get to the airport to have a fighting chance at survival.

Fatina was among the young patients being ferried to safety. The little girl's pelvis was crushed by an Israeli airstrike.

"I'm sad to leave Gaza," she told CBS News. "I'm going to miss my dad and my brother."

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Asked what she'd like people to know about the place where she's spent a disrupted childhood, Fatina said she would just "ask the world for a cease-fire."

Many of the patients on board the flight couldn't help but be amazed by their new surroundings and the care they were receiving.

Zahia Saa'di Madlum, whose daughter Rania has liver disease, said there wasn't "a single word that can describe what it was like" in Gaza. "We've had wars in Gaza before, but nothing like this one."

A total of 132 Palestinians were allowed to board the mercy flight, which was the sixth such mission operated by the UAE.

Near the back of the plane, CBS News met Esraa, who was accompanying two of her children and three others who were badly injured and left orphaned. Esraa's three other children were killed in an Israeli strike.
 
She said she wanted to be stronger for her surviving children, adding that for those she had lost, "their life now, in heaven, is better than this life."

While Esraa and her surviving kids, along with the orphaned children she now cares for, made it safely to the UAE, she said she still lives in darkness, haunted by the memory of the children who were taken from her by the war.

In:
• United Arab Emirates
• War
• Hamas
• Israel
• Palestinians
• Gaza Strip

Imtiaz Tyab

Imtiaz Tyab is a CBS News correspondent based in London.

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