Mother of wounded Gaza child pleads to reunite family in Ireland
Buchra Abu Marasa arrived in Ireland in May with her six-year-old son Hamoud, whose leg was blown off in an Israeli airstrike that also killed her husband, Ahmed. Her three other children, aged between 8 and 14, remain trapped in Gaza, and she says the delay in reuniting them is taking a devastating toll on her family.
"I kindly appeal to the government, to the Irish people, to the Minister of Justice, to the Minister of Health to help us to reunify our families as they are part of our hearts. We can't do anything without them."
"Imagine that you are a mother and you feel like you are helpless for your children. It's too hard, too hard for my son to live without his siblings. I hope at the end of the day we can get a positive result."
Ms Abu Marasa's family's case is one of 12, where child medical evacuees from Gaza who came accompanied by a parent or guardian, are seeking to be reunited with their other immediate family members.
Prime Time understands that difficulties over obtaining visas for family members from the Department of Justice prompted the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill to pause the medical evacuation programme until a humanitarian approach could be formalised for the existing evacuees and any future children arriving.
As a result, eight gravely ill children in Gaza who were notified to the HSE as approved for "immediate evacuation" on 6 June have had their evacuations paused over visa issues, according to the Irish doctors involved.
The eight children who have blast injuries, chronic medical conditions, or are acutely ill from malnutrition, were to be part of the Government medical evacuation programme for 30 children announced last September.
In a statement to Prime Time, Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said that programme will resume "in the autumn."
Consultant Orthopaedic Surgeon Thomas Donnelly, from Children's Health Ireland, confirmed the urgent medical need of four of those children injured in explosions.
He told Prime Time that such a delay in evacuating the children compromises a good outcome.
"I am deeply concerned because the nature of their injuries is so severe that any delay in their evacuation will have a heavy impact in their functional outcome and whether they'll be able to even walk again in some cases."
"A lot of the injuries are blast injuries, which involve shrapnel, and the shrapnel has torn through their bodies, caused damage to their bones, muscles, tendons, and nerve damage as well. All of which needs to be acted upon very quickly to help reconstruct them."
According to Dr Donnelly, these injured children also run the risk of acquiring life threatening infections. "If they have infections or bad soft tissue injuries while it's in Gaza, they don't have the medical supplies to be able to deal with that and they could become very unwell or even die whilst over there awaiting transfer."
According to a doctor involved in the child medical evacuation programme from Gaza, who spoke to Prime Time on condition of anonymity, Department of Health and HSE officials told doctors that the programme was being "paused" over a disagreement with the Department of Justice about the visas medical evacuees were entitled to have.
So far, 12 children have been evacuated in two groups, one last December and another in May.
The first group were entitled to what is called a Stamp 4 visa – allowing them family reunification while the second group did not.
Prime Time understands that only two of 12 evacuees so far were allowed to bring siblings and more than one parent or guardian.
Most of the evacuees who have already arrived are here with just their mother or guardian, while their other parent and siblings remain in Gaza. They are all now seeking visas to bring a second parent – in cases where they are still alive - and their remaining brothers and sisters.
In one case, a boy who arrived with just his 19-year-old sister is seeking to be reunited with his parents.
In a statement to Prime Time, the Minister for Health Jennifer Carroll MacNeill said the issue of visas for the families of evacuee is now being resolved.
"For important humanitarian reasons, we have in practice extended the medical evacuation initiative beyond the original Government agreement regarding the number of accompanying carers or family members," the statement says.
"While the initial agreement allowed for one patient and one accompanying carer, we have in fact been facilitating the arrival of up to three immediate family members per child. I believe this approach better reflects the urgent and compassionate nature of the situation."
"I fully expect to be back at Dublin Airport in the autumn to welcome the next group of children and their families," the Minister added in her statement.
But autumn is a long way off for Buchra Abu Marasa and her son Hamoud to be reunited with her children.
She says they are all traumatised after being were hit by an Israeli airstrike on 23 July 2024 .
"We [were] displaced seven times due to the war on Gaza," she told Prime Time. "When we were at the green area, the safety area, they bombed our tent."
"They killed my husband. My son lost his leg and suffered severe damaged nerve in the second leg. My daughter became partially deaf because of the explosion."
Seeing he was injured, Buchra tried to carry Hamoud out of the area after the strike when "suddenly his leg fell down from my arms." A neighbour then brought Hamoud to hospital on his bike.
In the month after the strike, Hamoud underwent multiple surgeries. His leg was shortened repeatedly. "There is no treatment for nerves in Gaza, so I [was] forced to travel. I have no choices."
Buchra left Gaza with Hamoud and spent three months in Egypt seeking medical care. She received news that she had been accepted for a medical evacuation to Ireland.
"I agreed in the moment," she told Prime Time. "I [was] forced to leave three of my children behind under the horrors of war."
Her three remaining children, one of whom is also injured, are living in southern Gaza with Buchra's 80-year-old mother. "She can't do anything for them. We suffered a lot in the war because there is no food. They are starving. There is no water."
She says her teenage son walks two kilometres each day to fetch 16 litres of dirty water to drink, wash and cook. Her daughter lights a fire to cook whatever food they can find. The physical and psychological trauma, Buchra says, is destroying them.
"Sometimes I can't call them because of the bad network in Gaza. I [am] searching all the time on the news, maybe they [are] killed, and I don't know."
"Each moment in Gaza is a deadly moment. Each moment is a deadly moment."
Hamoud talks about his siblings every day, especially his sister, who is partially deaf. "He always mentions her. 'I hope I can get Kenzi here. I hope I can play with Kenzi. I hope I can eat that with Kenzi.' He keeps some chocolate for her. He is full of hope."
Three months after arriving in Ireland, Buchra says herself and Hamoud are struggling without the rest of their family.
"I can't have my food because I know they are starving. They have no money. Hamoud hardly recovers. He can't heal. He needs his brother and sisters to recover emotionally and physically."
Despite all she has endured, Buchra says she is grateful to Ireland for allowing her son to get medical care.
"No one promised me to get my children here," she says. "My focus was on getting treatment for Hamoud because he has nerve damage. It gets worse by time. But I believe this country, known of its generous and humanity, will not separate families."
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