Smoke rises from a building hit by an Israeli strike in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip on July 20, 2024, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Agence France-Presse

PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES — Doctors in Gaza told how they defied all odds to deliver a newborn baby on Saturday, pulling him from his mother’s womb shortly after she died from wounds sustained in an Israeli airstrike.

Ola Adnan Harb al-Kurd was nine months pregnant and managed to survive just long enough to reach Al-Awda hospital in central Gaza after her home in the Nuseirat refugee camp was hit by an airstrike overnight, doctors said.

Doctors at the emergency department quickly took action when they saw the heavily pregnant woman arrive in critical condition, said the head of the obstetrics and gynecology department, Raed al-Saudi.

READ: Hatching eggs in Gaza at risk as hospital generators run out of fuel

She was taken to the operating room but was already “near death”, surgeon Akram Hussein told AFP.

Because the mother, who was reportedly in her 20s, could not be saved, doctors detected a heartbeat and called in a team of gynecologists and surgeons.

“An emergency caesarean section was performed and the fetus was removed,” Saudi said.

READ: Newborns in Gaza have greater chances of survival

Kurd was one of at least 30 people killed in the Gaza Strip during a 24-hour Israeli bombardment that killed six members of one family in a neighborhood north of Gaza City, rescue workers and medics in Hamas-ruled Gaza said.

At least seven people were killed in attacks on the Nuseirat refugee camp overnight, a civil defence spokesman said.

Medical sources at Al-Awda hospital reported that four children from Nuseirat were injured while playing on a roof. One child had to be amputated.

Kurd’s husband was also injured in the rocket attack on their home, surgeon Hussein said.

After surviving the C-section, baby Malek Yassin faced further medical hurdles. He was born in critical condition but was stabilized after receiving oxygen and medical care, Saudi said.

The war in Gaza has made childbearing increasingly dangerous, with pregnant women facing strikes almost daily, hampering their access to health care.

When they reach the hospital, they find facilities that humanitarian organizations say are stretched to the limit.

According to UN agencies, there are currently only 1,500 hospital beds available for the more than two million people living in Gaza, compared to 3,500 before the war.

Al-Awda Hospital in Nuseirat is the only medical facility able to provide obstetric and gynecological care in central Gaza since the war began last year.

Doctors Without Borders reported this week that premature births and maternal complications, including eclampsia, haemorrhage and sepsis, are increasing.

The war in Gaza was sparked by Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,195 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally based on Israeli figures.

The militants also captured 251 hostages, 116 of whom are still in Gaza. According to the Israeli military, 42 are dead.

At least 38,919 people, mostly civilians, have been killed in Gaza by the Israeli retaliation, according to figures from the Ministry of Health of the Hamas-ruled territory.