A premature baby girl who was saved from the womb after her mother was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Gaza has now died as well.
Sabreen Jouda passed away in a hospital in the southern city of Rafah on Thursday after surviving for five days in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit, her uncle told the Associated Press. Her father and four-year-old sister were also killed in the airstrike that claimed the life of her mother shortly before midnight on Saturday.
First responders transported the family’s bodies to a hospital where medical workers performed a posthumous cesarean section on Sabreen’s mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant at the time she was killed. The infant was then rushed to another hospital where doctors battled to keep her alive.
Rami al-Sheikh, Sabreen’s uncle, told the AP that his niece had been buried alongside her father on Thursday. “We were attached to this baby in a crazy way,” he said. “God had taken something from us but given us something in return,” he added, referring to Sabreen’s survival after the death of her family.
“But (now) he has taken them all,” al-Sheikh said. “My brother’s family is completely wiped out. It’s been deleted from the civil registry. There is no trace of him left behind.”