On the identification label stuck on the incubator, we can read: “Baby of martyr Dareen Abou Chamalah”, with her date of birth, October 21. Also that of the death of his sister, his brother and his mother. Mecca was born following a post-mortem cesarean section at Abou Youssef al-Najjar Hospital. A few hours before, almost his entire family was wiped out in an Israeli strike in the Gaza Strip.
Only his father, Ayman Abou Chamalah, a 34-year-old Palestinian, survives. “I was starting to go down the stairwell when the strike happened. If I had gone down 30 seconds earlier, I would have been killed with them,” he told AFP. Arriving at the hospital, Ayman Abou Chamalah begged the doctor to give birth to his wife: “I told him it was her last wish.”
Permanent aftereffects
The doctors managed to deliver her. The newborn, Mecca, was then rushed to the pediatric ward of the UAE Red Crescent Hospital in Rafah.
“The baby was in very serious condition when she arrived here and was immediately placed on life support. But the first diagnosis is not good because the brain was deprived of oxygen between the time of the mother’s death and the birth,” explains the hospital’s head of emergency, Mohammad Salameh, to AFP. “It is very likely that she will suffer permanent after-effects,” he adds.