The baby who was rescued from her dying mother’s womb a few days ago after an Israeli airstrike in southern Gaza has died, the BBC has learned.
Sabreen al-Sakani, a baby girl, was born by Caesarean section in a Rafah hospital shortly after midnight on Sunday.
Amid chaotic scenes, doctors resuscitated her using a hand pump to push air into her lungs.
However, he died on Thursday and She was buried next to her motherafter whom he received his name.
Baby Sabreen was among 16 children killed in two airstrikes in Rafah last weekend. They all died in a bombing aimed at the housing complex where they lived.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they were attacking Hamas fighters and infrastructure.
Sabreen’s mother was seven and a half months pregnant. Shortly before midnight on Saturday, while she, her husband Shukri, and her three-year-old daughter Malak were sleeping, the Israeli airstrike on her home occurred.
Her husband and Malak died and she suffered serious injuries, but when rescuers arrived at the scene, the baby was still alive inside her womb.
They took the woman to the hospital, where doctors performed an emergency cesarean section to deliver the baby girl.
It appeared that baby Sabreen had stabilized and was subsequently placed in an incubator. At that time doctors described her condition as critical.
He weighed just 1.4kg when he was born and was in severe respiratory distress, which doctors said was because he was born prematurely.
“This child should have been in her mother’s womb at that time, but it was deprived of this right“said Dr. Mohammed Salama, head of the emergency neonatal unit at the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, after his birth.
Baby Sabreen’s maternal grandmother, Mirvat al-Sakani, told the BBC that the family had planned to adopt the girl.
Offensive on Rafah
There are currently an estimated 1.4 million people crammed into Rafah, who had been told by the IDF to move south to safety at the start of the war.
However, Israel says it is planning a ground offensive in Rafah, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that it is necessary to defeat Hamas and rescue the hostages.
Satellite images show two new tent camps in southern Gaza and Israeli media report that preparations are underway to evacuate civilians from Rafah.
The United States has called on Israel to adopt a selective strategy rather than launch a full-scale invasion of Rafah, which could precipitate an even larger humanitarian crisis.
Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry says that of the more than 34,000 people killed in Gaza since the war began on Oct. 7, at least two-thirds are women and children.
Israel launched its offensive after some 1,200 Israelis and foreigners – mostly civilians – were killed and another 253 were returned to Gaza as hostages, according to Israeli counts.
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