A baby who was delivered by emergency cesarean section after his mother was killed in an Israeli strike died Thursday, a relative said, less than a week after news of his birth brought a glimmer of hope to War-torn Gaza.
The baby, born prematurely after a strike in southern Gaza that also killed her father and sister, suffered breathing problems and doctors were unable to save her, said her uncle, Rami al-Sheikh.
“I buried her in her father’s grave,” he said Friday in a telephone interview.
The mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was killed along with her husband, Shukri, and their 3-year-old daughter, Malak, when an Israeli strike hit their home in the town of Rafah shortly before midnight last Saturday. Rescue teams transported the bodies to the Emirati hospital in Rafah, where doctors performed a cesarean section on Ms al-Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant.
The girls’ uncle said Malak had wanted to name his little sister Rouh, the Arabic word for soul. The extended family instead decided to name him after his mother, Sabreen.
Sabreen weighed just three pounds at birth, said Dr. Mohammed Salama, head of the neonatal intensive care unit at the Emirati hospital. Her birth was filmed by a journalist from the Reuters news agency, who filmed doctors performing artificial respiration on her after she emerged, pale and limp, from her mother.
Instead of a name, doctors first wrote: “The baby of martyr Sabreen al-Sakani” on a piece of tape placed on her chest.
“The baby was born in a tragic situation,” Dr Salama told Reuters, adding: “Even if this baby survives, she was born an orphan.”
News Source : www.nytimes.com
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