Premature infant rescued from mother's womb in Gaza dies after 5 days

A premature infant who was rescued from her mother's womb shortly after the woman was killed in an Israeli airstrike has died.

Sabreen al-Rouh Jouda, named after her mother, died in a Gaza hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated and medical teams were unable to save her, according to her uncle Rami al-Sheikh.

The home of Sabreen al-Rouh's family in the southern Gaza city of Rafah was hit by an Israeli airstrike shortly before midnight Saturday. Sabreen al-Rouh’s parents and her 4-year-old sister were killed.

First responders took the bodies to a nearby hospital where medical workers performed an emergency C-section on the mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, who was 30 weeks pregnant. The infant was kept in an incubator in a neonatal intensive care unit at another hospital until she died five days later.

Rami al-Sheikh said that Sabreen al-Rouh was buried next to her father on Thursday.

More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed during the Israel-Hamas war, according to local health officials who say about two-thirds of the dead have been women and children.

Israel declared war on Hamas and unleashed a pulverizing air and ground offensive in Gaza in response to the militants' deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. The militants killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took another 250 hostage.

More than half of Gaza's 2.3 million people have sought refuge in Rafah, where Israel has conducted near-daily raids as it prepares for a possible offensive in the city.