A student in Edinburgh has described her desperation after her family was apparently scammed by an agency promising it could help evacuate her younger sister from Gaza.
Laila Saliekh, 26, who is living in Scotland, says her 24-year-old sibling, Katrena Saleh, is sheltering in a tent in Rafah.
She claims her family paid the equivalent of £2,363 to an agency that promised to give Ms Saleh safe passage, but they stopped responding to calls and emails once paid.
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She told the PA newsagency: “We paid $3,000 to an agency and they still haven’t replied to us and it’s been months. We didn’t have a choice and were desperately seeking anyone who could help.”
Ms Saliekh says that she is “really scared” about the “threats of an invasion on Rafah”.
“Our house is gone, everyone is living in tents, where is she supposed to go?” she told PA.
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Ms Saliekh believed Ms Saleh was entitled to help from Ukraine as she says she and her siblings were born there and her sister has a Ukrainian passport.
The family relocated to Gaza when they were children, she claims, but her parents decided to leave for safety reasons, first moving back to Ukraine in 2020, before settling in Sweden when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022.
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Ms Saliekh moved to Edinburgh – where she is now studying a Physics PhD – in 2022, but she says her sister decided to stay in northern Gaza to continue studying medicine at the Islamic University of Gaza.
Ms Saleh had hoped the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine or its embassies would be able to help in evacuating her but she has not had any success.
Ms Saliekh hopes to raise money to pay a different agency to get her sister out of Gaza.
She says it would cost between $5,000 (£3,939) and $10,000 (£7,878), with the hopes that Ms Saleh could go to Sweden to be with her relatives there.
It is, she admits, a “huge amount” of money, but “it’s not only crossing the border, there’s additional costs like tickets or a car.”
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PA has contacted the Ukrainian foreign ministry and Kiev’s embassies in Israel and Egypt but they have not yet responded to a request for comment.
Ms Saliekh added: “I sometimes feel like she’s going crazy, like laughing hysterically and saying she doesn’t care anymore – you get used to all these horrible things and it becomes part of your day.
“I have seen a lot of pictures of her and she seems to have lost a lot of weight, but she’s distracting herself with some volunteer work at the medical aid points.
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“She keeps telling me that she’s fine and she repeats the same thing everyday that she’s doing better than most of the people, that she’s grateful for what she has,” Ms Saliekh continued.
“I don’t know who is supposed to comfort who, but she’s comforting us and I don’t know how she does that.”
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The war started after Hamas launched a cross-border attack on southern Israel on 7 October last year, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking more than 250 others hostage.
Israel retaliated with strikes and a military ground assault in Gaza which have so far killed more than 30,000 people, around two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Hamas-run health ministry.
On Tuesday, the latest round of ceasefire talks in Cairo ended without a breakthrough.
US vice president Kamala Harris has urged Israel to have a credible humanitarian plan before any military advance in Gaza.
