RAFAH, Gaza Strip — Sabreen Jouda came into the world seconds after his mother abandoned him.
His house was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight on Saturday. Until then, the family was like so many other Palestinians trying to take refuge from the war in the city of Rafah, on the southern tip of Gaza.
Sabreen’s father was murdered. His 4-year-old sister was murdered. His mother was murdered.
But emergency services learned that her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, was 30 weeks pregnant. At the Kuwaiti hospital where the bodies were taken, medical workers hurriedly performed an emergency caesarean section.
Little Sabreen was on the verge of death and struggling to breathe. Her petite body lay in a recovery position on a small piece of carpet as medical workers gently pumped air into her open mouth. A gloved hand struck her chest.
She survived.
On Sunday, hours after the airstrike, she whimpered and writhed inside an incubator in the neonatal intensive care unit of the nearby Emirati hospital. He was wearing a diaper too big for her and her identity was scrawled in ballpoint pen on a piece of tape around her chest: “The baby of the martyr Sabreen al-Sakani.”
“We can say that there is some progress in his health status, but the situation is still at risk,” said Dr. Mohammad Salameh, head of the unit. “This child should have been in her mother’s womb at that time, but she was deprived of this right.”
He described her as a premature orphaned girl.
But she is not alone.
“Welcome to it. She is the daughter of my dear son. I will take care of her. She is my love, my soul. She is a memory of her father. I will take care of her,” said Ahalam al-Kurdi, her paternal grandmother. She put her hands on her chest and swayed in sorrow.
At least two-thirds of the more than 34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since this war began have been children and women, according to the Gaza Ministry of Health.
The other Israeli airstrike in Rafah overnight killed 17 children and two women from an extended family.
Not everyone recovers immediately after these types of attacks.
“My son was also with them. My son had parts of his body left and they still haven’t found him. They don’t recognize him,” said Mirvat al-Sakani, Sabreen’s maternal grandmother. “They have nothing to do with anything. Why are you addressing them? We don’t know why, how? “We do not know”.
On Sunday, survivors buried the dead. Children covered in blood were placed in body bags and on the dusty ground while families waited.
Little children watched and tried to stand on the edge of a grave.
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