A hospital in the Gaza Strip reported on Saturday that a fetus was rescued from the womb of a pregnant Palestinian woman who was killed in an Israeli airstrike. This incident occurred in the context of the ongoing nine-month war between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas movement.
The woman, who was in her ninth month of pregnancy, was among at least 24 victims, according to Gaza’s emergency services, resulting from a series of airstrikes conducted from Friday night to Saturday. She was critically injured during a raid on the Nuseirat camp in central Gaza, which also killed two other women and a child.
According to Dr. Raed al-Saudi, head of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Al-Awda Hospital, the woman died from her injuries at the hospital. He explained to AFP: “After her death, doctors performed an ultrasound to check the fetus’s condition and detected a heartbeat,” before calling in surgeons.
Dr. Akram Hussein, an emergency surgeon, confirmed that the medical team “immediately performed a cesarean section and extracted the fetus.” He added, “The baby was doing well and was transferred to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital” in the nearby city of Deir al-Balah.
The newborn’s father, also injured in the bombing, was transferred to the same hospital. Dr. Hussein specified that the baby is a boy.
In a related context, the Israeli army announced in a statement on Saturday that it had “eliminated a number of terrorists in several confrontations” in the Gaza Strip. Meanwhile, Hamas reported in a statement that about 30 people were killed in Israeli bombardments over the past 24 hours.
These developments come as the war in Gaza continues, which has so far resulted in the death of 1,195 people in Israel, mostly civilians, according to official Israeli statistics. In Gaza, the Israeli military offensive has led to the death of at least 38,919 people, the majority of whom are civilians, according to the Ministry of Health in the Hamas-run Gaza government.