Baby delivered from dying mother’s womb in Gaza ‘miracle’

A medic holds a Palestinian newborn girl after she was pulled alive from the womb of her mother Sabreen Al-Sheikh (Al-Sakani), who was killed in an Israeli strike, along with her husband Shokri and her daughter Malak in the southern Gaza Strip. (REUTERS)
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Updated 24 April 2024
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Baby delivered from dying mother’s womb in Gaza ‘miracle’

  • Israel has killed at least 34,183 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory
  • 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”

RAFAH, Palestinian Territories: 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.




A Palestinian baby girl, saved from the womb of her mother Sabreen Al-Sheikh (Al-Sakani), who was killed in an Israeli strike along with her husband Shokri and her daughter Malak, lies in an incubator at Al-Emirati hospital in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip April 21, 2024. (REUTERS)

“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 realized 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.




People wait before destroyed buildings in cleared area by the coastline for humanitarian aid packages to drop over the northern Gaza Strip on April 23, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict in the Palestinian territory between Israel and the militant group Hamas. (AFP)

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.




Palestinians mourn over the bodies of relatives killed in Israeli bombardment, at the al-Najar hospital in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, on April 21, 2024 amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. (AFP)

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 fetus 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.
Makkah 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.”
 

 


Iran Guards chief says Netanyahu ICC warrant ‘political death’ of Israel

Updated 58 min 32 sec ago
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Iran Guards chief says Netanyahu ICC warrant ‘political death’ of Israel

  • Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami calls the ICC warrant ‘a welcome move’
  • Salami adds it is a ‘great victory for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements’

TEHRAN: The head of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on Friday described the arrest warrant issued by the International Criminal Court for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a former defense minister as the “end and political death” of Israel, in a speech.
“This means the end and political death of the Zionist regime, a regime that today lives in absolute political isolation in the world and its officials can no longer travel to other countries,” Revolutionary Guards chief General Hossein Salami said in the speech aired on state TV.
In the first official reaction by Iran, Salami called the ICC warrant “a welcome move” and a “great victory for the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance movements,” both supported by the Islamic republic.
Israel and its allies criticized the ICC’s decision to issue an arrest warrant on Thursday for Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu and the country’s former defense minister Yoav Gallant.
The court also issued a warrant for the arrest of Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif.
The warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant were issued in response to accusations of crimes against humanity and war crimes during Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, sparked by the Palestinian militant group’s attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
The move drew angry reactions from Netanyahu, who denounced it as antisemitic and from Israel’s closest allies, including the United States, but was welcomed by rights groups including Amnesty International.
The ICC’s move theoretically limits the movement of Netanyahu, as any of the court’s 124 national members would be obliged to arrest him on their territory.
The court’s chief prosecutor Karim Khan urged the body’s members to act on the warrants, and for non-members to work together in “upholding international law.”


Israel armys say ‘eliminated’ five Hamas militants in north Gaza raid

Updated 22 November 2024
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Israel armys say ‘eliminated’ five Hamas militants in north Gaza raid

  • Israeli military: Slain militants had ‘led the murders and kidnappings in the area of Mefalsim’

JERUSALEM: The Israeli military said on Friday it had “eliminated” five Hamas militants, including two commanders, in an overnight raid in northern Gaza’s Beit Lahia.
In a statement, the military and the Shin Bet security agency said they had “eliminated five Hamas terrorists, including a Nukhba (commando) company commander and an additional company commander who participated in the Oct. 7 massacre” that sparked the Gaza war last year, adding that the slain militants had “led the murders and kidnappings in the area of Mefalsim,” a kibbutz in southern Israel.


Strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs after Israeli evacuation call

Updated 22 November 2024
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Strikes hit Beirut’s southern suburbs after Israeli evacuation call

  • Latest raids follow intense Israeli attacks on south Beirut as well as other areas in Lebanon’s south and east

BEIRUT: Strikes hit the southern suburbs of Beirut, a bastion of Hezbollah militants, shortly after an Israeli evacuation warning early on Friday, according to Lebanese official media and AFPTV footage.

The state-run National News Agency said “enemy warplanes” had carried two raids on south Beirut, and that “thick smoke was seen rising from the vicinity of the Lebanese University” in the Hadath neighborhood.

Live AFPTV footage showed plumes of smoke over the area after the Israeli military called for the evacuation of three locations, warning on social media of imminent attacks.

The military later said in a statement its “fighter jets completed a new round of strikes” on Beirut’s southern suburbs.

The latest raids follow intense Israeli attacks on south Beirut as well as other areas in Lebanon’s south and east, where Israel says it has been targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah militants.

More than 11 months of cross-border fire between Israel and Hezbollah over the Gaza conflict escalated into all-out war in September, with Israel conducting an extensive bombing campaign, primarily targeting Hezbollah strongholds, and sending ground troops into southern Lebanon.

The Lebanese health ministry said at least 52 people were killed on Thursday in Israeli strikes, including some 40 dead in Lebanon’s east.

On Friday, the Israeli army also issued evacuation warnings for parts of the coastal city of Tyre and the nearby Burj Al-Shemali Palestinian refugee camp.

The pace of the strikes across Lebanon has increased since US envoy Amos Hochstein ended his visit to Beirut on Wednesday, seeking to broker an end to the Israel-Hezbollah war.

Lebanon’s health ministry said Thursday that at least 3,583 people had been killed in the violence since October 2023. Most of the deaths have been since September this year.


UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

Updated 22 November 2024
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UN could meet with Israel PM despite warrant: UN

  • UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started
  • UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013

UNITED NATIONS: The arrest warrant issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over the war in Gaza does not bar UN officials from meeting with him in the course of their work, the UN said Thursday.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Netanyahu have not spoken since the war started as a result of the Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023, although there have been contacts with the Israeli leader by UN officials in the region.
Guterres has been declared persona non grata by Israel, which accuses him of being biased in favor of the Palestinians. So talks between him and Netanyahu are very unlikely.
After the warrants issued Thursday by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu, former defense minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas’s military chief Mohammed Deif, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said UN policy on contacts with people facing arrest warrants dates back to a document issued in 2013.
“The rule is that there should not be any contacts between UN officials and individuals subject to arrest warrants,” Dujarric said.
But limited contacts are allowed “to address fundamental issues, operational issues, and our ability to carry out our mandates,” he added.
In late October, at a summit of the BRICS countries in Russia, Guterres met with President Vladimir Putin, who faces an arrest warrant from the ICP over the war in Ukraine.
That meeting, during which Guterres reiterated his condemnation of the Russian invasion, angered Ukraine.


Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

Updated 22 November 2024
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Palestinians welcome ICC arrest warrants for Israeli PM and former defense minister

  • Palestinian Authority calls on UN member states to ensure the warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, who are accused of war crimes, are acted upon
  • The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, says decision is ‘binding’ on all members of the International Criminal Court

LONDON: Palestinians welcomed the decision by the International Criminal Court on Thursday to issue arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former minister of defense, Yoav Gallant.

The Palestinian Authority said the court’s decision comes as Israeli forces continue to bomb Gaza in a conflict that has killed nearly 45,000 Palestinians since the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas, and it hopes the ruling will help to restore faith in international law, the official Palestinian WAFA news agency reported.

Netanyahu and Gallant are the first leading officials from a nation allied with the West against whom the ICC has issued arrest warrants since the court was established in July 2002. It also issued an arrest warrant for Mohammed Deif, the head of the military wing of Hamas. Israeli authorities said in August he was killed by their forces in an attack the previous month, though Hamas have not confirmed this.

All three men are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity over their actions during the war in Gaza or the Oct. 7 attacks.

The PA said the decision to issue warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant was important because Palestinians “are being subjected to genocide and war crimes, represented by starvation as a method of warfare,” as well as mass displacement and collective punishment.

The PA, which signed up to the ICC in 2015, called on all UN member states to ensure the warrants are acted upon and to “cut off contact and meetings with the international wanted men, Netanyahu and Gallant.” Israel is not a member of the ICC.

The EU’s chief diplomat, Josep Borrel, posted a message on social media platform X on Thursday in which he described the court’s decisions as “binding” on all those who have signed up to it.

“These decisions are binding on all states party to the Rome Statute (the treaty that established the ICC), which includes all EU member states,” he wrote.

Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister who has spent 17 years in office during three spells in charge since 1996, denounced the decision by the ICC to issue the warrant as “antisemitic.”

He said it would “have serious consequences for the court and those who will cooperate with it in this matter.”