Ramallah: The baby girl who was born to a mother killed in an Israeli air strike in Gaza has died, dashing the hopes of Al Shaikh Ali and Qanan family. The baby girl who was named after her dead mother, Shayma'a.
Sources in Gaza told Gulf News that the tragedy of two families in Gaza did not end with the death of the 23 year old Shayma'a in the Israeli air strike. It continued when another family received her body by mistake from the morgue and buried it. And now with the death of the baby the family is completely shattered. At the time the successful birth of the girl was announced, the families hoped the little girl would grow up to remind them of her mother and be a symbol of the brutality of the Israeli aggression on the innocent Palestinian civilians.
It was without any warning that an Israeli air force F16 fired a missile at the house of Ebrahim Al Shaikh Ali, Shayma'a’s husband. The cement ceiling of the house fell on her, killing her on the spot. Following the attack, ambulance teams rushed to the scene. They found the woman to be already dead but they noticed that she was pregnant and that there was movement inside the woman's uterus.
The paramedics rushed the dead woman to the hospital where a team of six physicians performed a caesarean surgery to save the baby. The baby girl was born successfully with a minor cut under her eye due to the hasty procedure. The physicians announced that the baby girl had a 50 per cent chance to survive, but their hopes were dashed due to unavailability of Oxygen.
The sources said that following the death of the baby girl, the mother's family insisted on digging the grave to ensure it was actually Shayma'a body that was buried there. The family members had a last view of Shayma'a’s body but they left it there though the family had initially planned to exhume the body and provide her with a suitable funeral in the family burial place.
The sources said that the Ebrahim has been accused by Israel to be a member of the Islamic Jihad and that was why his house was targeted in an Israeli air strike. Ebrahim survived the air strike with light injuries. He received the treatments in hospital and was later discharged on hopes that his newly born baby would survive.
