By In a tragic turn of events, a Palestinian baby named Sabreen Jouda was born an orphan in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, just seconds after her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, lost her life in an Israeli airstrike.
The attack, which occurred shortly before midnight on Saturday, claimed the lives of Sabreen’s father and 4-year-old sister as well.
Emergency responders discovered that Sabreen al-Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant, had not survived the attack. In a desperate attempt to save the baby, medical workers at the Kuwaiti hospital performed an emergency cesarean section.
Medical workers found little Sabreen near death, struggling to breathe as they gently pumped air into her open mouth and tapped at her chest.
The newborn miraculously survived and made her way to the neonatal intensive care unit at the nearby Emirati hospital. Wearing an oversized diaper and with her identity scrawled on a piece of tape around her chest, Sabreen whimpered and wriggled inside an incubator.
The head of the unit, Dr. Mohammad Salameh, described her condition as progressing but still at risk, emphasizing that she had lost the right to stay in her mother’s womb.
Sabreen’s paternal grandmother, Ahalam al-Kurdi, vowed to care for the premature orphan girl, expressing her love and memory of the baby’s father.
According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, at least two-thirds of the more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the war began have been children and women.
The same Israeli airstrike in Rafah overnight claimed the lives of 17 children and two women from an extended family. Sabreen’s maternal grandmother, Mirvat al-Sakani, lamented her son’s undiscovered remains and questioned the deliberate targeting of innocent lives.
Families wept in grief as survivors buried their loved ones on Sunday, placing children in bloodied shrouds in body bags and lowering them into the dusty ground.
Young boys watched from the edge of the graves, trying to keep their footing amidst the tragedy that has befallen their community.
