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Crowds at Detroit Metro Airport recently cheered and sang as four children from Gaza arrived in wheelchairs. The children are amputees and are among thousands in Gaza who have lost limbs from Israeli bombardments. 

Now, they face severe, life-altering injuries. 

The Israel-Hamas war in Gaza has made that tiny part of the world — which is roughly the same geographical size as Detroit — home to the highest number of amputee children per capita. 

The World Health Organization says this crisis of child amputees is especially dire because these kids have little access to medical care. Israeli air strikes have decimated what was an already fragile medical system. Many children who have lost their limbs must have surgery without anesthesia, according to the United Nations. 

Steve Sosebee is trying to do something about that. He orchestrates complex plans to evacuate and treat Gazan kids through his organization HEAL Palestine — including the four children who arrived at Detroit Metro Airport on April 13. 

He joined The Metro on Tuesday along with HEAL Palestine volunteer Yasmeen Hamed, a Dearborn Heights mother who has opened her home to multiple young Palestinians who have arrived in the U.S. for treatment after experiencing intense pain and trauma.

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

More stories from The Metro on Tuesday, April 15:

• Cutting the ribbon on new affordable housing in Southwest Detroit
• A professor’s thoughts on reforming DEI at universities
• WDET celebrating the life and legacy of Judy Adams at Garden Theater this weekend
• Gov. Whitmer talks tariffs at the Detroit Economic Club

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.

 Subscribe to The Metro on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

Gaza is a “news graveyard,” according to the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

At least 232 journalists and media workers have been killed since the war in Gaza began. Some appear to have been targeted by the Israeli army, while others were killed alongside civilians. 

“The war in Gaza has, since October 2023, killed more journalists than the U.S. Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War (including the conflicts in Cambodia and Laos), the wars in Yugoslavia in the 1990s and 2000s, and the post-9/11 war in Afghanistan, combined,” a Costs of War report reads.

On Sunday, the number of journalist fatalities grew when an Israeli airstrike hit a tent camp in a hospital complex in southern Gaza. 

Journalist Helmi al-Faqawi was among the 10 killed. At least nine other journalists were severely injured when the encampment caught fire. 

It has been said — about journalists in Gaza and in many other places — that you can kill a journalist, but you can’t kill the story. 

This unflinching spirit of the press — to seek out the truth and report it at any cost — is central to The Gaza Project. It is a collaboration among more than 40 journalists across a dozen news organizations. Forbidden Stories is coordinating the project. The nonprofit works “to continue and publish the work of other journalists facing threats, prison, or murder.”

Hoda Osman is the executive editor at Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism, among the news organizations working on The Gaza Project. She joined The Metro to discuss the findings thus far from The Gaza Project and some of the journalists who have been killed.

Use the media player above to hear the full conversation.

More stories from The Metro on Tuesday, April 8:

• Detroit’s oldest choir has a new director
• ‘Jazz-A-Bet’ book bridges music history and children’s literature
• Fighting food waste with composting in metro Detroit

Listen to The Metro weekdays from 10 a.m. to noon ET on 101.9 FM and streaming on-demand.