Premature baby girl rescued from dead mother’s womb dies in Gaza after five days

RAFAH, Gaza Strip (AP) — 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 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 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 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.”

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