Sana’a: An unidentified woman in northern Yemen left a newborn baby allegedly born out of wedlock to die in a toilet cistern at a local hospital, a local journalist and media outlets said on Wednesday.
Mohammed Darman, a journalist with Al Masader daily, told Gulf News by telephone that janitors at the Mother and Child Department of the Saudi Hospital in Hajja province on Monday found the dead baby that had drowned in the cistern. The department is only visited by women and children.
In Yemen’s highly conservative society, a woman can face execution if she is caught having sexual relations with a man outside of marriage and a baby born out of wedlock is considered shameful.
“The mother must have given birth outside the hospital and hid it in the toilet. Patients and workers would have heard labour cries if he was born in the toilet. The baby’s umbilical cord was still attached,” Darman said.
Doctors suspect that the baby spent at least three days in the cistern.
“It is difficult to identify who threw him in the toilet as hundreds of women visit the hospital every day,” he said.
He said that this is the first time a woman has gotten rid of a baby in such “horrible” way, even though there are many other cases where parents abandon newborns outside mosques or near garbage bins.
In a separate incident, not far from the Hajja province, a stray bullet killed a child suckling at its mother’s breast in the western port city of Hodeida, Al Masder reported on Wednesday.
The mother was on the roof of her house when the bullet struck the baby’s chest. The mother was baffled when she realised her baby had stopped nursing, and was shocked when she saw the one-year-old was bleeding.
After a brief investigation, police determined that a wedding in the neighbourhood was the source of the bullet. Firing guns is a traditional ritual in marriage ceremonies in some area in the country.
The newspaper said that police briefly skirmished with the armed celebrators and managed to arrest the groom’s father while others fled.
