A baby girl born in Gaza died after her mother was killed

A baby girl born by emergency Caesarean section after her mother was killed in an Israeli raid died Thursday, a relative said, less than a week after a glimmer of hope appeared in war-torn Gaza.

Her uncle, Rami Al-Sheikh, said that the girl, who was born prematurely after a raid on southern Gaza that also killed her father and sister, suffered from respiratory problems and doctors were unable to save her.

“I buried her in her father’s grave,” he said in a phone interview on Friday.

The mother, Sabreen Al-Sakani, was killed along with her husband, Shukri, and their 3-year-old daughter, Malak, when an Israeli raid hit their home in the city of Rafah shortly before midnight last Saturday. Rescue teams transported the two bodies to the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, where doctors performed a cesarean section on the woman, who was thirty weeks pregnant.

The girls' uncle said Malak wanted to name her little sister Rooh, which is the Arabic word for soul. Instead, the extended family decided to name her after her mother, Sabreen.

Be patient Dr. Mohammed Salama, head of the neonatal intensive care unit at the Emirates Hospital, said that his weight at birth was only three pounds. Her birth was videotaped by a journalist from the Reuters news agency, who filmed doctors giving her artificial respiration after she emerged from her mother, pale and limp.

Instead of a name, doctors initially wrote “the child of the martyr Sabreen Al-Sakani” on a piece of tape on her chest.

Dr. Salama told Reuters: “The child was born in a tragic situation,” adding: “Even if this child survived, she would have been born an orphan.”