They save a Palestinian baby

RAFAH (AP).—Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds following his mother abandoned him.

His house was hit by an Israeli airstrike on Saturday shortly before midnight. Until then, the family was trying to do the same as many other Palestinians: take refuge from the war in the city of Rafah, on the southern edge of Gaza.

Sabreen’s father died. Her 4-year-old sister died. His mother died.

But emergency services learned that her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant. At the Kuwaiti hospital where the bodies were taken, medical staff performed an emergency cesarean section.

Little Sabreen was on the verge of death, struggling to breathe. Her petite body lay in a recovery position on a small piece of carpet as medical workers gently pumped air into her open mouth. A gloved hand tapped her chest.

She survived.

Yesterday, hours following the airstrike, he moaned and writhed inside an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit at the nearby Emirati hospital. He was wearing a diaper that was too big for her, and her identity was scrawled in ballpoint pen on a piece of tape around her chest: “The baby of the martyr Sabreen al-Sakani.”

“We can say that his health condition has improved a little, but the situation is still risky,” said Dr. Mohammad Salameh, director of the unit. “This child should have been in her mother’s womb at this time, but she has been deprived of this right.”

Not alone

He described her as a premature and orphaned girl.

But she is not alone.

“Be welcome. She is the daughter of my dear son. I will take care of her. She is my love, my soul. She is a memory of her father. I will take care of her,” said Ahalam al-Kurdi, her paternal grandmother. She clutched her chest and shuddered with grief.

At least two-thirds of the more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since the war began have been children and women, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

The other Israeli attack on Rafah overnight killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.

Not everyone recovers quickly following these types of attacks.

“My son was also with them. My son became limbs torn apart and they still can’t find him. They don’t recognize him,” said Mirvat al-Sakani, Sabreen’s maternal grandmother. “They have nothing to do with anything. Why are they attacking them? We don’t know why, how. We do not know”.

Yesterday, the survivors buried the dead. Children covered in bloody cloth were placed in body bags and buried as families cried.

Little children watched and tried not to slip on the side of a grave.