A tiny ray of hope — a premature baby girl rescued from the womb of her dead mother killed in an Israeli strike on Gaza — has died.
Baby Sabreen — named after her mother — was delivered by Caesarean section in a besieged Rafah hospital last Sunday.
But the little girl died Thursday, and has been buried with her family.
Sabreen's mother was just over seven months pregnant when she, her husband and their three-year-old daughter were fatally injured in an explosion as they slept. The unborn baby was still alive in her mother's womb when rescue workers arrived.
Though Sabreen was stabilized in the hospital, she succumbed to severe respiratory distress because her lungs needed a longer period to develop in the womb, doctors told the BBC.
"This child should have been in the mother's womb at this time, but she was deprived of this right," said Dr. Mohammed Salama, head of the emergency neo-natal unit at Emirati Hospital,.
"I and other doctors tried to save her, but she died," he told Reuters. "For me personally it was a very difficult and painful day."
“Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds after her mother left it.
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 22, 2024
Their home was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight Saturday. Until that moment, the family was like so many other Palestinians trying to shelter from the war in Gaza's southernmost city of… pic.twitter.com/s1jOciPgqX
Sabreen's uncle told The Associated Press: "We were attached to this baby in a crazy way."
The baby girl's maternal grandmother, Mirvat al-Sakani, told the BBC that the family had planned to adopt her.
The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says that of the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since the war began at least two-thirds have been women and children.
