ガザ空爆で瀕死の母親から女児誕生　医師「奇跡」

【ラファ（パレスチナ自治区）ＡＦＰ＝時事】パレスチナ自治区ガザ地区で、イスラエル軍による空爆で瀕死（ひんし）になった母親から帝王切開によって女児が無事に誕生した。母親はその後死亡し、父親と姉も空爆で死亡したため、女児は孤児となった。（写真は、パレスチナ自治区ガザ地区南部ラファのクウェート病院で、イスラエル軍の空爆で瀕死になった母親から帝王切開で生まれた女児を診るパレスチナ人医師）
　ガザ南部ラファ東方で週末、妊娠７か月だったサブリーン・サカニさんはイスラエル軍の空爆で頭と腹に致命傷を負い、重体で救急搬送された。目撃者がＡＦＰに語ったところによると、サカニさんの自宅が空爆を受けたという。ガザの保健当局は、この空爆で少なくとも１９人が死亡したとしている。
　ラファにあるクウェート病院の院長で外科医のサヒブ・シャムス氏は、サカニさんについて、「呼吸困難に陥っていたにもかかわらず、生きていたのは奇跡だ」とＡＦＰに説明した。
　医療チームは、診察中にサカニさんが妊娠していることに気付き、麻酔薬が不足していたものの、直ちに帝王切開に踏み切った。
　シャムス氏によると、サカニさんは手術の「１０分後に死亡した」。サカニさんの夫ともう一人の娘も、病院到着時に死亡が確認された。
　複数の地元メディアによると、早産で生まれた女児の体重は２０００グラム未満だという。
　その後女児は、クウェートがガザでの死傷者の増加に対応するため昨年１２月にラファに開設した同院の小児科に移された。病院側によると、２３日午前の時点で容体は安定している。
　女児は孤児となったが、父方のおじ、ラミ・シェイクさんが退院後に引き取る意向を示している。
　シェイクさんは「母親のおなかから助け出されためいの様子を見に、毎日病院に行っている」とＡＦＰに語った。
　女児の父親がアラビア語で「魂」を意味する「ルー」と名付けたがっていたため、「サブリーン・ルー」と命名したという。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2024/04/24-16:39）

Under a ceaseless storm of strikes in Gaza, a baby girl has survived insurmountable odds as the only member of her family left alive after she was delivered by Caesarian section as her mother lay dying.
At just seven months pregnant, her mother, Sabreen al-Sakani, reached the emergency unit in critical condition after she was fatally wounded in the head and abdomen at the weekend.
An Israeli air strike hit her family's house in the east of the southern Gaza city of Rafah, witnesses told AFP.
It's a miracle that she was still alive, despite her difficulties in breathing, Sahib al-Shams, a surgeon and director of the Kuwaiti hospital in Rafah, told AFP.
While examining Sakani, the hospital's medical team realised she was pregnant.
They decided to go ahead with a C-section immediately, despite a lack of anaesthetics.
The mother died 10 minutes later, Shams said, adding that the baby's father and sister had been declared dead on arrival at the hospital.
Hospital staff said the baby was in stable condition on Tuesday morning.
At least 19 people died in the air strike on the Sakani family home, according to Gaza's health ministry.
The newborn was transferred to the paediatrics unit of the Emirati hospital, a field hospital established in December in Rafah to cope with the besieged Palestinian territory's mounting toll of injured and dead.
We quickly put her in an incubator, put her on oxygen and treated her with antibiotics, Haidar Abu Snimeh, an official at the Emirati hospital, told AFP.
- 'Baby of the martyr' -
Rami al-Sheikh, the baby's uncle, will become the orphan's caretaker upon her release from the hospital.
Every day, I go to the hospital to check on my brother's daughter who was rescued from her mother's womb, Sheikh told AFP.
I named her 'Sabreen al-Ruh' because her father wanted to name her Ruh, he added, referring to the Arabic word for soul.
Several local media said the baby weighed less than two kilogrammes, and that her mother had been in her seventh month of pregnancy when she was born.
The fact that this little girl was born alive despite the circumstances is nothing short of a great feat, Abu Snimeh said.
He added that when a pregnant woman like Sakani struggles to breathe, the foetus lacks oxygen, which can hinder its development.
Palestinian journalists filmed the birth, footage of which was widely circulated Monday.
The war between Israel and Hamas erupted when the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7.
The attack resulted in the deaths of 1,170 Israelis and foreigners, according to an AFP tally based on official Israeli figures.
Israel vowed to eliminate Hamas, and its ensuing military offensive in Gaza has killed at least 34,183 people, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
More than 1.5 million of 2.4 million Gazans were estimated to have taken refuge in Rafah, in the far south on the border with Egypt, though thousands have since been seen heading back north.
A handful of similar births were reported in the coastal territory.
Mecca Abu Chamalah was born by post-mortem C-section on October 21, after his mother was critically wounded by an air strike on their home in Rafah.
The identification tag pinned to his incubator read baby of the martyr Dareen Abu Chamalah.
UN Human Rights Chief Volker Turk said on Tuesday, The latest images of a premature child taken from the womb of her dying mother, of the adjacent two houses where 15 children and five women were killed -- this is beyond warfare.