Palestinian girl who lost arm in Israeli attack arrives in UK after US visa snub

A Palestinian girl who lost her arm during Israel’s bombardment of Gaza has arrived in the UK for treatment.

Mariam Sabbah, 10, was greeted at Heathrow airport on Tuesday, along with her mother, Fatma Salman, and two brothers, by a small crowd bearing gifts, balloons and bouquets.

The family arrived in London from Egypt after hopes to go to the US for treatment were thwarted when the Trump administration halted visitor visas for all Palestinians in August last year. Mariam is one of more than 11,000 patients who have been evacuated from Gaza since October 2023.

More than 18,500 patients, including approximately 3,800 children, still require urgent medical evacuation for life‑saving treatment unavailable in Gaza, according to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

Missing limb

Mariam suffered from critical abdominal and pelvic injuries and lost her left arm after an Israeli missile tore through her home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of the morning last March. When the heavy shelling woke her up, she ran to her parents’ bedroom, but part of the staircase collapsed and she was trapped beneath the rubble.

Her family and rescuers worked for three hours to free her and take her to Al-Aqsa Hospital, at the time one of the last functioning in the war-torn Gaza Strip, where the surgical team resolved that if the missing limb could be found, they would attempt to reattach it.

Returning to the rubble, her family were able to find the missing arm, which had been preserved by the cold weather. In a five-hour procedure, surgeons reconnected the blood vessels and nerves.

However, an infection after the operation, caused by the limb’s exposure to debris, dust and explosive residue, left the staff with no choice but to amputate.

Gaza has the highest number of child amputees per capita of anywhere in the world, according to UNRWA, with up to 4,000 amputations recorded since October 2023.

Mariam Sabbah poses for a photograph at the at Heathrow airport.

Medical charity FAJR Global, based in the US, evacuated Mariam from Gaza to Egypt and worked to secure specialist reconstructive and rehabilitative care; she requires limb lengthening, a custom prosthesis and advanced paediatric reconstructive surgery to treat her pelvic injuries.

The US Department of State denied the family’s visitor visa as part of a ban on all Palestinians travelling to the US. Project Pure Hope (PPH), a UK-based charity, stepped in after they identified Mariam as a candidate for medical evacuation to the UK, where privately funded specialist care could be arranged through their established network of paediatric hospitals.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer had announced in July that the UK would evacuate children in urgent need of medical care from Gaza to receive specialist treatment in NHS hospitals across the UK.

A government spokesperson said: “The UK government worked with the World Health Organisation and other partners to carry out medical evacuations from Gaza to the UK in autumn 2025. Thanks to the efforts of the NHS and a number of local authorities, 50 children and their immediate families arrived from Gaza and are receiving the quality care they need.

Ramping up aid

“The UK also supports Project Pure Hope’s initiative to bring a small number of children from Gaza to the UK for privately funded specialist care.

“Following the ceasefire, now is the time to scale up aid and ensure much-needed medicines and medical supplies are getting into Gaza. We continue to play our part, with our support to UK-Med’s field hospitals enabling over 1 million patient consultations across Gaza.”

Raza Halim, co-founder of Project Pure Hope, said: “We cannot forget the children of Gaza. PPH undertook the first medical evacuation of children from Gaza. We showed it can be done, and established the pathway for future evacuations, which formed the blueprint for the government Medevac scheme.

“All of our work, and the British public’s overwhelming reaction to it, has shown that there is an intense desire to continue to help the most vulnerable and dispossessed in this world. We have to meet the moment. We cannot let up.”

The Independent