Baby born by emergency caesarean after mother dies in Gaza shelling

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.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/28/baby-born-caesarean-gaza-after-mother-dies

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