Sabreen Jouda, the newborn baby pulled alive from the body of her mother killed in Rafah

Malak, her three-year-old sister, wanted to call her Rouh, which in Arabic means “spirit”. She was thrilled by the idea of ​​no longer being alone with mother Sabreen and father Shoukri, despite the war and fear. Or perhaps precisely because of hers, because a baby in her mother’s womb was a powerful sign of hope and a future to look at every morning when she woke up, like the sun. Now someone else will decide what to call her, because Malak and mother Sabreen and father Shoukri are no longer here, other lives swept away during an Israeli bombing on Rafah in which 16 people were killed, 9 of them children. She, who will not be called Rouh but Sabreen Jouda in homage to her mother, no, she made it: she was extracted from the body of her now brain-dead mother in a hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, at the thirtieth week of life. And she’s fine, she will survive, there are those who take care of her and hold her hand. Among doctors and nurses there are also those who, as a sign of protest, decided to attach adhesive tape to her little body: “This is thehe little girl of the martyr Sabreen Al-Sakani” recites, like a cry.

«We delivered her through an emergency caesarean section: lthe mother was in very critical condition, her brain was exposed, we decided to save one of the two” say the doctors, including Mohammad Salama, head of the unit at the Emirates Hospital in Rafah, who told the whole story to news agencies and also sent videos to Reutersthen published by the English newspaper The Guardian. The child he weighs 1.4 kg, he is in an incubator: «He will stay here for three or four weeks then We’ll see if he goes and where: to his family, to his aunt or uncle or to his grandparents. Here is the greatest tragedy: even if this little girl survived, she was born an orphan »continues Salama.

The girl’s grandmother, who is called Mirvat al-Sakani, told theAssociated Press who will take care of the little girl: «It’s a memory of her father. My son was also with them, his body was torn to pieces, they haven’t found him yet. Why did they target them? Why did they become a target? We don’t know why, we don’t know…”.

According to Unicef ​​data released just a few days ago, since the start of the war on October 7, more than 13,800 children have been killed in Gaza. And a child is injured or dies every 10 minutes, the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women said in a statement. More than 10 thousand women were killed, 6 thousand of whom left behind 19 thousand orphaned children.