Mariam Sabbah, 9, injured in an Israeli strike, needs reconstructive surgery in the US but can’t get it because of the Trump travel ban

Mariam Sabbah had been fast asleep, huddled under a blanket with her siblings, when an Israeli missile tore through her home in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, in the early hours of 1 March.

The missile narrowly missed the sleeping children but as the terrified nine-year-old ran to her parents, a second one hit. “I saw her coming towards me but suddenly there was another explosion and she vanished into the smoke,” says her mother, Fatma Salman.

The parents searched desperately for their children and found Mariam lying unconscious in a pool of blood; her left arm was ripped off, shards of shrapnel had pierced through her small body, and she was bleeding heavily from her abdomen.

Besides blowing off her arm, the blast left Mariam with severe abdominal and pelvic injuries from shrapnel tearing through her bladder, uterus, and bowel.

“Mariam needs specialised paediatric reconstructive surgery,” says Dr Mohammed Tahir, a British surgeon who treated Mariam while volunteering at al-Aqsa hospital in Gaza. “Her arm amputation is also very high and requires limb lengthening and specialist prosthesis. Without this, it will be very difficult for her to live a normal life.”

Mariam and her family secured the offer of surgical care from a specialist team in Ohio, and the little girl waited two months to be given permission from Cogat to leave Gaza, by which time her condition had deteriorated. She was finally evacuated to Egypt but was then stuck for months waiting for her US travel documents to be processed. 

President Trump has blocked medical evacuation for children on the grounds that their accompanying parents are security risks.

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