Deir al-Balah, Jul 29 (Agencies) : When the doctors gently pulled the tiny newborn from the womb in an emergency caesarean, her mother had already been dead for an hour.
Shayma al-Sheikh Qanan, 23, was eight months pregnant when an Israeli tank shell hit her home in the central Gaza strip town of Deir al-Balah, reducing it to rubble. She was left in a critical condition. Her husband, a local radio journalist, was also badly wounded.
"Her body was brought in after an Israeli shelling at 3am on Friday," said Fadi al-Kharti, a doctor at Deir al-Balah hospital. "We tried to revive her but she had died on the way."
Before paramedics managed to dig her out, she had been stuck under the rubble of her home for an hour. "Then we noticed movement in her stomach, and estimated she was about 36 weeks pregnant," he says. Doctors performed an immediate caesarean and saved the baby, who was named after her late mother.
For 43-year-old Mirfat Qanan, it was a tragedy to lose her daughter, but there was joy at becoming a grandmother.
"God has protected this child for me. My daughter Shayma is dead, but I now have a new daughter," she said. "She'll call me 'mummy' just like her mother did."
The newborn was being looked after in the intensive care unit in another hospital in Khan Yunis to ensure her survival. Now four days old, she was breathing through an oxygen mask in the hospital's maternity ward.
Abdel Karim al-Bawab, head doctor at the ward, said staff were keeping a close eye on the baby to monitor her condition. "Her vital signs are stable, but she must stay here in this state for at least three more weeks," he said.