Eyad Baba
A hospital in the Gaza Strip announced on Saturday that it had saved a baby from its mother’s womb after she died from injuries caused by Israeli bombardment.
Ola Adnan Harb al Kurd was nine months pregnant and was among more than 24 victims left by the shelling in the early hours of Saturday, according to rescue services.
The woman was seriously injured in the Nusierat camp in the center of the Palestinian territory, according to an official at the Al Awda hospital.
But when she arrived at the hospital she was “almost dead,” said surgeon Akram Hussein.
Doctors were unable to save the mother, but performed an ultrasound that detected the baby’s heartbeat. They performed an emergency caesarean section “and removed the foetus”, the surgeon explained to AFP.
The newborn was initially in critical condition, but after receiving oxygen and medical care he was stabilized, explained Raed al Saudi, head of the hospital’s obstetrics and gynecology department.
The baby was transferred in an incubator to Al Aqsa hospital in Deir el Balah, also in the center of the Gaza Strip.
In addition to Kurd, Israeli bombardments killed two women and a child in the Nusierat camp, according to a doctor at Al Awda hospital. Kurd’s husband was also injured in the attack.
Israel did not confirm individual strikes, but a military statement said troops were “conducting targeted bombardments of terrorist infrastructure” in central Gaza.
The conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza erupted on Oct. 7, when Islamist commandos killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 in southern Israel, according to a tally based on official Israeli data.
The Ministry of Health of the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip announced on Saturday that 38,919 people have died in this Palestinian territory since the beginning of the war.
