In summer 2024, nobody believed Sadeel would live to see her first birthday.
The 11-month-year-old urgently needed a liver transplant – something that wasn’t available to her in the war-ravaged hospitals of Gaza.
But she was granted a rare evacuation to Egypt on medical grounds, arranged by British charity Children Not Numbers following ITV News reporting on her story.
She travelled with her father Tamer, who donated part of his own liver to save his daughter, but her mother Huda was left behind.
A few weeks ago, the family was finally reunited, and they are now living together in one of Gaza’s few undamaged buildings.
“The painful thing is that Sadeel came back not knowing her mother,” Huda told ITV News.
"My daughter doesn’t know her own mother. When I first held her in my arms she seemed to be in shock. She doesn’t know me," she said.
Phone and video calls were not enough to maintain a normal mother-daughter connection during the two years they were apart.
“How could I hug my daughter, or kiss my daughter, through a phone call?”
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