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LONDON: The UK government is set to announce plans to evacuate hundreds of children from Gaza for medical treatment.

Up to 300 children will be given free healthcare on the National Health Service, in a scheme running “in parallel” with the group Project Pure Hope, a source told The Times.

So far, just three children from Gaza have been granted visas to travel to the UK for vital medical treatment since the start of the war in October 2023.

The three cases followed months of painstaking work by Project Pure Hope to raise money from private donors. 

In the coming months, children evacuated from Gaza to the UK will be accompanied by a parent or guardian, and siblings where deemed necessary.

Sources told The Times that biometric and security checks will be conducted on families by Home Office staff before traveling to the UK.

More than 7,000 people have been evacuated from Gaza on medical grounds since the start of the war, 5,000 of them children, according to local health officials. Most have traveled to neighboring Egypt as well as the Gulf.

The UN children’s charity UNICEF estimates that as many as 50,000 children have been killed or wounded in the conflict.

Around 200 children have traveled to Europe for treatment, including to Spain, Italy, Ireland, Norway and Romania. 

Earlier this week, the third child to travel to the UK from Gaza, 15-year-old Majd Al-Shaghnobi, was greeted at London’s Heathrow Airport, alongside his mother and two siblings, by well-wishers bearing flowers.

Al-Shaghnobi was struck by debris from a tank shell in February 2024, shattering his jaw and leaving him with life-changing injuries. He will undergo treatment at Great Ormond Street children’s hospital in London.

Last month, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, pledged to help bring more children from Gaza to the UK for medical assistance.

“I know the British people are sickened by what is happening. The images of starvation and desperation in Gaza are utterly horrifying,” he wrote in the Daily Mirror. 

“We are urgently accelerating efforts to evacuate children from Gaza who need critical medical assistance — bringing more Palestinian children to the UK for specialist medical treatment.”

The new scheme is believed to have been orchestrated by Foreign Secretary David Lammy, Health Secretary Wes Streeting and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper.

SRINAGAR, India: More than 400,000 Hindus took part in a month-long pilgrimage in contested Indian-run Kashmir, authorities said, shrugging off security worries weeks after conflict with Pakistan.

The pilgrimage began on July 3 and closes officially on August 9, but organizers said that lashing rains had damaged narrow paths forcing a premature end.

Official Vijay Kumar Bidhuri said in a statement late Saturday that 415,000 pilgrims had taken part.

Many of the faithful began their trek to the Amarnath ice pillar from near Pahalgam, where gunmen on April 22 killed 26 mostly Hindu tourists in the Muslim-majority region.

New Delhi said the gunmen were backed by Pakistan, claims Islamabad rejected — triggering a series of tit-for-tat diplomatic measures that escalated into a four-day conflict.

It was the worst standoff by the nuclear-armed nations since 1999, with more than 70 people killed in missile, drone and artillery fire on both sides, before a May 10 ceasefire.

New Delhi last week said that three Pakistani men who carried out the Pahalgam attack were killed during a gunbattle on July 28 in forests adjacent to the hills where the cave shrine is located.

A few devotees may still visit the cave, but the numbers this year fall short of the estimated half a million devotees who took part in 2024.

Officials appealed to Hindus to undertake the pilgrimage, ramping up security for the event by deploying 45,000 troops with high-tech surveillance tools overseeing the grueling trek to the cave, dedicated to Shiva, the deity of destruction.

On Sunday, Indian forces exchanged fire with gunmen for a third day in Kulgam, far from the Amarnath pilgrimage route.

Soldiers have killed two militants, a senior police officer said.

Kashmir has been divided between the India and Pakistan since their independence from British rule in 1947, with both administering it in part and claiming in full.

Rebel groups have fought Indian forces for decades, demanding Kashmir’s independence or its merger with Pakistan.