Gazan mother reunited with evacuated daughter after two years

Gazan mother reunited with evacuated daughter after two years 3 hours ago Share Save Lucy Williamson BBC Middle East correspondent, Jerusalem Share Save BBC Sundus al-Kurd and her daughter Bisan had been separated for more than two years At least eight children who were evacuated from Gaza as premature babies in the early weeks of the war, have returned from Egypt and been reunited with their relatives. The toddlers were among more than 30 severely ill newborns in incubators, who were evacuated from Gaza's Shifa Hospital in November 2023 , during heavy fighting. The hospital complex had earlier been occupied by Israeli forces, who said it was being used by Hamas. Sundus al-Kurd, a mother waiting for her daughter's return on Monday, said that she was "torn between fear and joy", as she worried that she would not be accepted as a parent after more than two years apart. Waiting at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis and clutching a pink-embroidered dress for her daughter, Bisan, the mother described to the BBC how she had tried to take her newborn baby out of Shifa hospital after Israeli forces occupied it, but was told that Bisan could not be moved from her incubator. It was almost a year, Sundus said, before she knew what had happened to her. "I lived between despair and hope that my daughter might still be alive," she explained. "Months later, we heard in the news that premature infants had died in Shifa. …