Baby saved from dead mother's womb after airstrike in Gaza dies

A Gazan baby, who was born through an emergency caesarean section performed on her dying mother has died just days after birth.

Born prematurely and already an orphan on Sunday, Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds after her mother died.

She died in a Gaza hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her, according to her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh.

Their home in the southern Gazan city of Rafah 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 C-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.

A note left on the newborn's nappy said: “The martyr Sabreen al-Sakani’s baby."

"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.”

Mr al-Sheikh, said the baby was buried next to her father on Thursday. Speaking near Sabreen's grave in a cemetery in Rafah, he said: “We were attached to this baby in a crazy way."

“God had taken something from us but given us something in return", he said, referring to the baby surviving after her family died.

"But (now) he has taken them all. My brother’s family is completely wiped out. It's been deleted from the civil registry. There is no trace of him left behind.” More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war, according to local health officials, who say about two-thirds of the dead are women and children. Hamas health officials don't differentiate among combatants and civilians in their count. Israel declared war on Hamas and unleashed an intensive air and ground offensive in Gaza in response to the militants' October 7 attack on southern Israel, which saw about 1,200 people killed and another 250 hostages taken captive. More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for a possible offensive in the city.

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