The Palestinian infant recently rescued from his mother’s womb, dying after an Israeli bombardment, died in Rafah hospital, in the south of the Gaza Strip, his uncle announced Friday. The Emirati hospital, where this little girl born prematurely was hospitalized, indicated in a press release that Sabreen al-Rouh – as her uncle had named her – had died on Thursday, without further details.
“I received a call from (…) the Emirati hospital in Rafah which informed me that her condition had deteriorated, that they had not been able to save her, and that she had returned to her family,” killed in this bombing which hit the family home, east of Rafah, about a week ago, said the baby’s uncle, Rami al-Sheikh. He said he went to collect the body from the hospital on Friday. “I opened the grave of his father, Shukri, and buried him there, in the Awni Daher cemetery in Rafah,” he said.
The mother died after childbirth
“By the will of Allah, it was written that Rouh, daughter of Sabreen al-Sakani, was to join her family in eternity, despite the efforts of the neonatal department team at the Emirati Red Crescent Hospital to save her on Thursday,” the hospital wrote in a message posted Friday.
Sabreen al-Sakani arrived at the hospital dying, seriously injured in the head and stomach, and breathing with difficulty, a surgeon explained. While examining her, medical teams discovered that she was pregnant and decided to extract the fetus by cesarean section. His mother died a few minutes later, while the infant’s father and sister arrived at the hospital deceased.
19 victims
At least 19 people were killed in the strike that hit this house, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health. According to the UN, some 1.5 million people are crowded into Rafah, including more than a million displaced by more than six months of bombings and fighting in the Gaza Strip (2.4 million inhabitants). Israel assures that the last battalions of Hamas are grouped in Rafah and says it wants to carry out an offensive there to destroy them.
Hamas carried out an unprecedented attack in southern Israel on October 7, which resulted in the deaths of 1,170 people, mainly civilians, according to an AFP report based on official Israeli data. In response, Israel promised to wipe out the Palestinian Islamist movement, in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched an offensive which has so far left 34,356 dead, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas Ministry of Health.