Gaza Patients Stuck in Baghdad After Iraqi Authorities Confiscate Travel Documents

More than two years after Gaza resident Hanin Muhammad accompanied her 39-year-old sister Sabreen, a kidney transplant recipient, to the Iraqi capital Baghdad for medical treatment, Muhammad remains confined inside the Private Nursing Home Hospital inside Baghdad’s Medical City complex after Iraqi authorities confiscated her travel documents.

“More than two years ago, Gaza resident Hanin Muhammad accompanied by her 39-year-old sister Sabreen, a kidney transplant recipient, was flown to the Iraqi capital Baghdad for medical treatment”

Al Jazeera

Muhammad told Al Jazeera, “My six children are in Gaza, and I am entering my third year without seeing them,” as her family home in Rafah was destroyed by Israeli forces and her children were displaced into makeshift tents located between Rafah and Khan Younis.

Al Jazeera

Health authorities tracking the group described as the “Forgotten” say 46 Palestinians were evacuated to Iraq in May 2024 on a military aircraft, including 21 patients and 25 family escorts, with clinical classifications including five oncology patients, four suffering from blood disorders, one cardiac patient, one kidney disease patient, and 10 patients wounded in the ongoing war.

Al Jazeera reports that Zaher al-Waheidi, head of the ministry’s Information Unit, said 1,200 children in Gaza suffer from spinal cord injuries and paralysis directly resulting from Israeli attacks, while some 4,000 children require urgent treatment abroad.

The article says the crisis is compounded by movement limits, with only 154 children allowed to leave Gaza since the Rafah crossing, the enclave’s only gateway to the outside world, partially reopened in February amid heavy Israeli restrictions.

In Baghdad’s City of Medicine complex, Farida Mohamed sits on the fifth floor watching a teacher’s intermittently audible explanation as she waits for her turn in a new treatment session, while she is effectively living inside the hospital because she is not allowed to leave or move outside because her identification papers are held by Iraqi authorities.

Al-Arabiya TV describes how a treatment initiative that was supposed to last only six months turned into an open-ended stay that extended for two years, leaving Gaza wounded caught between pain, declining care quality, and interruptions of some medications.

Al-Jazeera Net

One female wounded person told Al-Arabiya TV that “the care during the initial period after their arrival was good,” including treatment, food, and basic needs, but she said that after the crossing opened, their desire to return to relatives increased as deterioration and lack of food set in.

Another wounded man described his health worsening while he said, “My health is very bad; life inside the hospital is hard; there is not enough treatment, and there is no financial support to sustain us; the cost of medicine is high.”

Al-Arabiya TV also reported that kidney transplant patients described suffering continuing for two years, including a two-month interruption of treatment amid lack of sufficient financial support and absence of any entity providing their basic needs regularly.

Al-Arabiya TV says Gaza’s wounded in Baghdad await an urgent humanitarian gesture to reorganize their medical and living situation and to open a clear path for treatment and return after years of waiting in the hospitals.

“On the fifth floor, where the smell of disinfectants rises above anything else, Farida Mohamed sits in front of the screen of a small phone, watching a teacher's intermittently audible explanation as she waits for her turn in a new treatment session inside the City of Medicine in Baghdad”

Daraj

Al-Jazeera Net reports that Haneen said her six children are in Gaza and that she is entering her third year without seeing them, while she pleaded for intervention to allow them to return to Egypt, complete registration, and see their children.

The same Al-Jazeera Net account says the Palestinian Embassy in Baghdad issued new passports for those lacking them, but Haneen said these documents are not stamped by the Iraqi government, rendering them effectively useless without official seals for travel.

It also describes Noor Ibrahim, a pseudonym for a young woman who arrived as a companion to her cancer-stricken aunt, saying she left with the promise of a six-month temporary treatment trip but more than two years have passed.

In the Al Jazeera report, Muhammad said she is begging for intervention so her family can get back to Egypt, register, and see their children, while the broader medical need is framed by Gaza’s Health Ministry data that only 154 children have been allowed to leave Gaza since the Rafah crossing partially reopened in February.