Gaza baby saved from dead mother's womb
By Fergal Keane
Sabreen was dead before she could look into the baby’s eyes or hold her.
The young mother had carried her child through seven-and-a-half months of pregnancy. They were days and nights of constant fear, but Sabreen hoped the family’s luck would hold until the war ended.
That luck vanished in the roar and fire of an explosion in the hour before midnight on 20 April.
The Israelis dropped a bomb onto the al-Sakani family home in Rafah where Sabreen, along with her husband and the couple’s other daughter – three-year-old Malak – were asleep.
Sabreen suffered extensive injuries and her husband and Malak were killed, but the baby was still alive in her mother’s womb when rescue workers reached the site.
They rushed Sabreen to hospital, where doctors performed an emergency caesarean section to deliver the child.
Sabreen could not be saved but doctors worked to resuscitate the baby, gently tapping her chest to stimulate breathing. Air was pumped into her lungs.
