Scots NHS doctor raises more than £100k to rescue family from war-torn Palestine

A Scots Palestinian NHS doctor has raised more than £100,000 to rescue his family members from Gaza but most of them have been unable to leave due to Israel taking control of the Gaza side of the crossing.Dr Salim Ghayyda, 52, told the PA news agency that his elderly parents: Nabil, 82, and Dalal, 72, and several other family members, including his five-year-old nephew, Nabil, and two-year-old niece, Lujain, were able to leave Gaza before the border closed."There is a strong sense of relief that they are safe but it's bittersweet that our other family members are still caged in Gaza," he said.Dr Ghayyda, who works as a paediatrician at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness, said that 24 family members are still stuck in the Gaza Strip and had been living in the southern city of Rafah when Israel ordered them to evacuate the city ahead of a military incursion.The family members: including a one-year-old boy, are now staying somewhere in the middle of Gaza.Dr Ghayyda is unsure of their exact location, although he knows that they managed to secure a three bedroom apartment for the four families to stay in."It's a waiting game now.

None of us really know what is going to happen," he said.Dr Ghayyda said his family members have been enduring "appalling" conditions in Gaza that are "like a horror movie", having been forced to relocate numerous times with no running water and little food.He said: "At the start of the war, (my parents) didn't want to move and then, under pressure - because it became so dangerous, they could die - they moved to the middle of Gaza from Gaza City, and they stayed there."They moved several more times, to Khan Younis, Rafah, and back northwards, "to try to get out of harm's way", with Dr Ghayyda's father