MILAN (Reuters) -A group of about 80 Palestinians, including an 11-year-old boy who lost nine siblings in an Israel strike in Gaza last month, will arrive in Italy later on Wednesday for hospital treatment, Italy’s foreign minister said.
Accompanied by his mother, Adam Al-Najjar will be transferred to Niguarda Hospital in the northern city of Milan, while others will be moved to nearby Bergamo, and Rome.
“Adam will arrive in Milan and be treated at Niguarda hospital because he has multiple fractures,” Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said in an interview with RTL 102.5 radio.
Tajani said the group would number about 80, including injured people and those such as family members accompanying them. Tajani’s spokesman later said the group was made up of 17 injured people, accompanied by 52 others.
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.
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.
(Reporting by Cristina Carlevaro, additional reporting by Alvise Armellini, Editing by William Maclean)
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