Gaza baby born by C-section after both parents killed in Israeli airstrike
Sabreen's birth came after a deadly weekend in Rafah as 22 people, including 18 children, were killed by air raids
Israeli strikes on the southern Gaza city of Rafah overnight killed 22 people, including 18 children, health officials said on Sunday.
Amidst the violence and chaos, doctors were able to save the life of an unborn baby as her mother lay dying from a head injury.
Born premature and already an orphan, Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds after her mother died.
Their home was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight on Saturday.
The family had been, like many other Palestinians, trying to shelter from the war in Gaza's southernmost city of Rafah.
Sabreen's father was also killed, along with her four-year-old sister.
Paramedics learned that her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant, so rushed her to hospital where medical workers performed an emergency cesarean section.
Once she was born Sabreen was struggling to breathe so medical staff laid her out in the recovery position on a small piece of carpet as others gently pumped air into her open mouth.
The note: “The martyr Sabreen al-Sakani’s baby" was written on the newborn's nappy.
“We can say there is some progress in her health condition, but the situation is still at risk,” Dr. Mohammad Salameh, head of the unit, said. “This child should have been in the mother’s womb at this time, but she was deprived of this right.”
It comes as a mass grave with nearly 300 bodies was uncovered at a hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis, Gaza Civil Defence workers said Monday, following the withdrawal of Israeli forces from the area earlier this month. Colonel Yamen Abu Suleiman, Director of Civil Defense in Khan Younis said that “today, 73 bodies were recovered” in the courtyard at the Nasser Medical Complex which brought the “total number to 283.” Suleiman alleged that some of the bodies had been found with hands and feet tied, “and there were signs of field executions. We do not know if they were buried alive or executed. Most of the bodies are decomposed.”
ITV News is unable to verify Suleiman’s claims and cannot confirm the causes of death among the bodies.
The Israeli Defence Force is yet to comment on the grave and it is not clear if it is aware of the bodies.
At least two thirds of the more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the war began have been children and women, according to Gaza's Health Ministry.
The other Israeli airstrike in Rafah overnight killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.
Israel has carried out near-daily air raids on Rafah, where more than half of Gaza's population of 2.3 million has sought refuge from fighting elsewhere in the region.
It has also vowed to expand its ground offensive against the Hamas militant group to the city on the border with Egypt despite calls for restraint, including from the US.
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