Seattle medical volunteer on humanitarian aid mission trapped in Gaza

SEATTLE — A Seattle woman on a humanitarian aid mission to help children is trapped in Gaza and is trying to get back home.

Those trying to get back to the Seattle area from the region will have to take a flight to a city where there is a direct flight to the U.S., and then take a connecting flight to Sea-Tac Airport.

But the journey is now complex amid the war between Israel and Hamas.

The U.S., Israel, and Egypt are in talks to create safe passage out of Gaza for Americans.

As Gaza is pounded by Israeli airstrikes, we’re starting to hear from volunteers who are stuck there.

Seattle woman Ramona Okumura, with the Palestinian Children Relief Fund, is one of those volunteers. Her relatives alerted us to her situation.

She’s a former University of Washington lecturer who’s also an expert in making prosthetic limbs.

Okumura travels to Gaza periodically to help children with missing limbs.

We talked to her from afar about what she was experiencing in Gaza.

“We’re in a safe place, as safe as we can be. We can hear the bombs hitting all around us,” she said. “Occasionally, there’s one that shakes the windows.

She talked about what it was like when her group left a hotel for a United Nations compound.

“It’s just a little 12-room hotel, but rockets and things were flying all over and they actually leveled a building 100 meters from where we stayed,” Okumura said. “The biggest problem we have is bombs are falling all around, rockets and missiles are falling all around, not to mention all the bullets and everything. It’s 20 miles drive down the road to Rafah.”

Even with the danger she’s facing, her thoughts turned to the safety of others.

“I’m also worried about the people who can’t leave here. Eventually, I’ll get evacuated but half of the 2.3 million people in Gaza are children, and they can’t leave, and they have nothing to do with what’s going on here, so they will suffer,” she said.

We also talked to one of Okumura’s relatives about the situation she’s facing.

“It really hits that the way that people are suffering there, and the chance that she could be hurt when really, her only purpose for being there is to help innocent children,” Okumura’s niece, Erika Okumura said. “It’s terrifying, it’s scary, it’s overwhelming, but it’s inspiring first and foremost.”

Ramona Okumura is retired and we’re hearing from others with similar backgrounds to hers that will go to Gaza to provide humanitarian relief.

Many of them are Americans, and for days there have been reports that they may be able to get out of the area into Rafah, Egypt, in the Sinai Peninsula, which shares a border with Gaza.

Meanwhile, Okumura’s family is hoping that she can evacuate and get on a flight that would lead her back to Sea-Tac Airport before a full-scale ground invasion, which could happen soon.

“Once they start a ground battle, you don’t know who is who, and where is where, and I do not want to be here during a ground invasion,” Ramona Okumura told us from Gaza.

A church group from Bellingham has also been trying to get back home after they became trapped during a trip to Israel. They plan on taking flights back to Seattle starting Friday night.

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