Yahoo – AFP,
Mai Yaghi, 28 July 2014
KHAN YUNIS
(Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - When the doctors gently pulled the tiny
newborn from her mother's womb in an emergency Caesarian section, the woman had
already been dead for an hour.
Twenty-three-year-old
Shayma al-Sheikh Qanan was eight months pregnant when an Israeli tank shell hit
her home in the central Gaza Strip town of Deir al-Balah, reducing it to
rubble.
She was
left in critical condition and her husband, a local radio journalist, was also
badly wounded.
"Her
body was brought in after an Israeli shelling at 3:00 am on Friday," said
Doctor Fadi al-Kharti, who was at Deir al-Balah hospital when she was rushed
in.
"We
tried to revive her but she had died on the way to hospital."
Before
paramedics managed to dig her out, she had been stuck under the rubble of her
home for an hour.
"Then
we noticed movement in her stomach, and estimated she was about 36 weeks
pregnant," he says.
Doctors
performed an immediate Caesarian section and saved the baby, who was named
after her late mother.
For
43-year-old Mirfat Qanan, it was a tragedy to lose her daughter, but she was
delighted at becoming a grandmother for the first time.
"God
has protected this child for me. My daughter Shayma is dead, but I now have a
new daughter," she said.
"She'll
call me 'mummy' just like her mother did."
For the
time being, the tiny baby was being looked after in the intensive care unit in
another hospital in Khan Yunis to ensure her survival.
Just four
days old, she was breathing through at an oxygen mask in the hospital's
maternity ward.
Joy
pierced with grief
Abdel Karim
al-Bawab, head doctor at the maternity ward, said staff were keeping a close
eye on the baby to monitor her condition.
"The
child is in serious condition, and needs to be constantly hooked up to a
breathing machine since she was oxygen-deprived between her mother's death and
her birth," he told AFP.
"Her
vital signs are stable, but she must stay here in this state for at least three
more weeks," he said.
Qanan's
eyes filled with tears.
"She
had really been looking forward to being a mother," she said, her voice
cracking.
"What
did Shayma do to deserve to die and lie under rubble for an hour without being
recovered?
"What
did she do to Israel to make it destroy her house on top of her without any
warning?" she asked.
"She
was just a young wife who had only been married a year."
Relatives
said F-16 warplanes had fired two missiles at the house which was located in a
densely-populated neighbourhood.
Israel
began a crushing military operation to stamp out rocket fire and destroy
tunnels used by militants to infiltrate southern Israel on July 8.
In the
ensuring three weeks, more than 1,050 Palestinians have been killed and over
6,200 wounded.
UN figures
show more than three quarters of the victims were civilians, among them more
than 230 children and around 120 women.
In Israel,
at least 50 people have been killed, most of them Israeli soldiers killed in
the fighting in Gaza.
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