GAZA: Rescue workers in central Gaza have saved the unborn baby of a heavily pregnant woman who was killed in an Israeli attack, Palestinian media reported on Saturday.
The Palestinian news agency WAFA said that the child had been delivered in an emergency operation at the Al Awda Hospital in Nuseirat.
The newborn is now being treated at the hospital and is said to be in a stable condition, DPA reported.
Palestinian media reported that a total of eight people had been killed in the Israeli army attack on a residential building in the refugee neighbourhood in the coastal strip.
An Israeli army spokesperson said on enquiry that the army had attacked "terror targets throughout the Gaza Strip during the night, including terrorists and terror infrastructure in the Nuseirat area."
Ola Adnan Harb al Kurd, who was nine months pregnant, barely survived a punishing night of missile strikes that rescue services across the Hamas-run territory said killed more than 24 people, including six members of the same family. But by the time Kurd reached Al Awda Hospital, she was "almost dead", according to surgeon Akram Hussein. Doctors were unable to save the mother, but performed an ultrasound that detected the baby's heartbeat.
They quickly staged an emergency cesarean section "and extracted the fetus," the surgeon said.
The newborn was initially in critical condition, but after receiving oxygen and medical attention was stabilised, said Raed al Saudi, head of the hospital's obstetrics and gynaecology department.
He was placed in an incubator and transferred to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir Al Balah.
Kurd was among three women and a child killed by an Israeli missile fired on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, according to a medical official at Al Awda Hospital. Her husband was also wounded in the strike on the family home. - Agencies
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