Sabreen came into the world moments after her mother left her. The baby was born in the Kuwaiti Hospital – and she is now in the neonatal intensive care unit of the nearby Emirates Hospital, also in Rafah – after the death of her mother, killed in an Israeli raid.
The doctors managed to save her thanks to a caesarean section. But the little girl was born an orphan not only of her mother: the entire family – her father Shoukri and her three-year-old sister Malak – was wiped out by the bombing.
The story is told by the Associated Press, and was picked up – among others – by the Guardian and Sky News. “We tried to save the patient,” says Dr. Ahmad Fawzi, but there was nothing left that could be done for her. «But we realized that she was pregnant and so we had to do an emergency caesarean section to try to save the baby.. Thank God, we succeeded.”
The little girl had difficulty breathing but doctors managed to resuscitate her. In a video published by the AP, the little girl is seen in an incubator. She has no name but attached to her hand is a ribbon with the inscription that simply reads “Daughter of the martyr Sabreen al Sakani”. According to the Associated Press, he should take the name Sabreen Jouda and his uncle will take care of him. «Sabreen al-Sakani was 30 weeks pregnant – explains in the video another doctor, the head of the hospital’s neonatal unit, Mohammed Salama -. The newborn’s condition is now stable, she will have to stay here for three 3-4 weeks.”
Also in Rafah, another air strike killed 17 children and two women, all belonging to the same extended family, say the Palestinians quoted by Sky. According to the latest balance sheet from the Gaza Ministry of Health, the victims of the Israeli offensive – which began after the massacre of 7 October, when men from Hamas and other armed groups entered Israeli territory from Gaza, killing 1,200 people and kidnapping around 250 – to date there are 34,151.
