Orphaned preemie saved in Gaza dies
Infant rescued after her mother’s death in Israeli strike in Rafah has perished 5 days later, relative says.
RAFAH, Gaza Strip — A premature Palestinian infant, rescued from her mother’s womb shortly after the woman was killed in an Israeli airstrike, has died, her uncle said Friday.
Sabreen Jouda died in a Gaza hospital Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her, said her uncle, Rami al Sheikh.
Sabreen’s home in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight April 20. Her parents and 4year-old sister were killed.
First responders took the bodies to a nearby hospital, where medical workers performed an emergency cesarean section on her mother, Sabreen al Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant.
The infant was kept in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit at another hospital until she died five days later.
Al Sheikh told the Associated Press that Sabreen was buried next to her father on Thursday.
“We were attached to this baby in a crazy way,” he said, speaking near Sabreen’s grave in a cemetery in Rafah.
“God had taken something from us but given us something in return” with the baby surviving after her parents and sister died, he said. “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,” he said.
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. The health officials don’t differentiate among combatants and civilians in their count.
Israel declared war on Hamas and unleashed a pulverizing air and ground offensive in Gaza in response to the militants’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took about 250 hostage.
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.