Premature baby girl rescued from mother’s womb dies

Israeli strike in Gaza killed both parents and 4-year-old sister.

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 on 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 last Saturday. Her parents and 4-year-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 said Sabreen was buried Thursday next to her father.

“We were attached to this baby in a crazy way,” he said, speaking near Sabreen’s grave in Rafah.

“God had taken something from us but given us something in return” with the baby surviving after her family 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.”

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 another 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.

MOHAMMAD JAHJOUH/AP Sabreen Jouda was delivered prematurely after her mother, 30 weeks’ pregnant, was killed in an Israeli airstrike. She was kept in an incubator in a Rafah hospital but died Thursday.