Nine-months pregnant, Ola al-Kurd couldn’t wait to hold her baby and bring new life to Gaza, a war that has killed more than 39,000 Palestinian civilians and destroyed much of the enclave.
That special moment never came.
According to her father, Adnan al-Kurd, an Israeli airstrike hit their family’s home in al-Nuseirat, central Gaza, on July 19. He said the blast pushed Ola several floors down and she died in the house. The house was full of women, children and the elderly.
Somehow, her child survived, as did her husband, who was admitted to a hospital.
“It’s a miracle that the fetus inside her remained alive when she was martyred (died),” Adnan al-Kurd said, looking at a photo of his daughter’s graduation ceremony.
The blast, like many others, killed several members of a single family, a daily tragedy in Gaza since Israel launched its offensive on October 7 last year in response to a devastating cross-border attack by Palestinian Hamas militants.
Mediators from the United States, Qatar and Egypt have failed in several attempts to secure a ceasefire. So it is highly unlikely that Israeli air strikes and shelling will end anytime soon.
“She wanted to hold her child in her arms and fill our home with his presence,” al-Kurd said. “She would say, ‘Mom, hopefully this will make up for the loss of my martyred brothers and bring life back to our home.’”
Surgeons at Nuseirat’s Al Awda Hospital delivered the newborn, Malek Yassin, against all odds. He was then transferred to Al Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah, where an aunt touched the baby’s face as he lay in an incubator.
“Thank God this child’s life was saved and he is now alive and healthy,” said Khalil al-Dakran, a doctor at the hospital where many medical facilities have been destroyed in more than nine months of war.
Al-Kurd looks at photos of his three late children who died in the Gaza war. He said baby Yassin is fair-skinned, like his dead uncle Omar. “I visit him every day. He is a part of me,” he said.
There is no respite for infants who survive relentless Israeli bombing, as the conflict wreaks further devastation across the densely populated Gaza Strip.
“We are actually facing huge difficulties in the nursery department,” Al-Dakran said, as there is a lack of sufficient medicines and supplies and there are fears that the hospital’s generator could stop working at any time due to a shortage of fuel.
Hospitals in impoverished Gaza have collapsed or been severely damaged during the war, which began when Hamas-led militias attacked Israel. According to Israeli figures, 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 people were taken hostage.
Israel responded with air and ground strikes that killed more than 39,000 Palestinians and flattened much of the coastal region, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Dakran said, “What is this child’s fault that he had to start his life in difficult and very poor conditions, and was deprived of even the most basic necessities of life?”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
