Palestinian boy who lost nine siblings arrives in Italy for treatment

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MILAN (Reuters) -A group of 17 Palestinian children, including an 11-year-old boy who lost nine siblings in an Israel strike in Gaza last month, arrived in Italy on Wednesday for hospital treatment, accompanied by more than 50 family members.

Adam Al-Najjar, who has multiple fractures, arrived with his mother at Milan’s Linate airport where he was welcomed by Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, before being transferred to the city’s Niguarda Hospital.

The plane that landed at Linate carried five other injured Palestinian minors, while 11 more arrived on flights to other Italian airports.

The May 23 attack left Adam in a serious condition at Nasser Hospital, one of the few operational medical facilities in southern Gaza.

Adam “is stable, has a head wound that is healing but his left arm is bad, the bones are fractured and the nerves damaged,” his 36-year-old mother, Alaa al-Najjar, a paediatrician, told Italian newspaper la Repubblica.

Adam’s father, Hamdi al-Najjar, who was also a doctor, died a week after the attack.

“The damage is in my left hand, there is a problem with the nerves, I can’t feel my fingers. There’s still a lot of pain,” Adam told Turkish news agency Anadolu.

A total of 70 Palestinians were set to arrive in Italy on three military aircraft that set off from Israel’s Eilat airport, the Italian foreign ministry said earlier on Wednesday.

The patients will be treated at hospitals in numerous cities including Milan, Rome, Florence and Bologna.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) website, more than 15,000 children have reportedly been killed and over 34,000 injured in almost two years of war in Gaza.

Including the latest operation, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has so far brought 150 injured Palestinians from Gaza to Italy for treatment, the foreign ministry said.

The Italian government has been a staunch supporter of Israel since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas-led militants that killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages to Gaza, according to Israeli figures.

In recent months, Rome has criticised the extent of the Israeli response, and expressed concern as the death toll in Gaza has mounted, while declining to apply sanctions.

Italy was not among numerous European Union countries that called last month for a review of EU-Israeli economic and trade relations.

(Reporting by Cristina Carlevaro and Claudia Greco, additional reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Gavin Jones)