Ukraine evacuated a group of people from Gaza, among them children

Ukraine evacuated a group of people from Gaza, among them children

On Tuesday, September 30, the Defence Intelligence of the Ministry of Defence and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine evacuated 57 people from the Gaza Strip, including 48 Ukrainian citizens—16 children, 14 women, and 18 men. This evacuation was the first since March 2024.

This was reported by the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine.

 

They noted that nine Palestinians—members of Ukrainian citizens’ families—were also evacuated from the Gaza Strip.

The plane with the group has already landed at Chisinau airport, and from the capital of Moldova, the evacuees will head to Ukraine by buses.

"For a month and a half, we lived in tents with five children. Our house was destroyed by an explosion, thank God everyone survived. When we learned about the evacuation, we immediately decided to return home. I’m from Poltava region—my mother lives there. We will finally see each other," says Mrs. Lyudmyla, who managed to evacuate.

 

However, not all civilians who wanted to evacuate managed to do so.

As Viktoriya Nesterenko, a project manager at the Human Rights Center ZMINA, noted, according to her information, the lists of those to be evacuated were not fully formed in general; only on the morning of September 29—the day of evacuation—the list included 112 people, 71 people left the Gaza Strip, and as a result, only 57 people were allowed into Israeli territory.

"There are two cases I am aware of. The first is a family of five: the woman, her son, and daughter were on the list. But her eight-year-old son and husband were not included in the list. It’s clear that she would not leave her young son behind, so she stayed, and the older son, who is 19, and the daughter also refused to leave. In the second case, there is also a Ukrainian citizen; she is on the list, but her two children, aged one and a half and two and a half (the older child is completely blind.—Ed.), were not on the list. Therefore, this woman also refused to leave Gaza. And these are just the two families I know about," Nesterenko explained.

The human rights activist points out that all these people were on the evacuation lists submitted by the Ukrainian side for verification by the Israeli special services, and accordingly, it is these Israeli services that sort people from this list: some are allowed to leave the Gaza Strip for Israeli territory, and some are denied. Therefore, such situations arise.

However, according to her, there is another problem: Ukraine cannot resolve the issue that during the evacuation, the Israeli side separates families. She emphasizes that it is the task of our state to protect the rights of Ukrainians and to press Israel so that their special services allow whole families through and do not separate members of one family.