New child infants had been evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital within the Gaza Strip and crossed into Egypt on Nov. 20, 2023.
Anas Baba for NPR
disguise caption
toggle caption
Anas Baba for NPR
New child infants had been evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital within the Gaza Strip and crossed into Egypt on Nov. 20, 2023.
Anas Baba for NPR
RAFAH, the Gaza Strip — For days, Nour Al-Banna did not know if her infants had been useless or alive.
On Oct. 4, Al-Banna gave delivery to twin women — her first youngsters — and named them Leen and Bayan. They had been born prematurely and wanted further care. In order that they had been transferred to Gaza Metropolis’s Al-Shifa Hospital, a contemporary facility with a fleet of incubators for newborns.
Al-Banna and her husband visited usually. The ladies had been getting stronger.
“They reached a stage the place they had been being educated to nurse,” Al-Banna tells NPR. “Then the conflict occurred.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas militants crossed from Gaza into Israel, killing some 1,200 individuals and taking about 240 others hostage, in accordance with the Israeli authorities. Israel responded with airstrikes and a floor invasion into Gaza that has killed greater than 12,700 individuals, in accordance with Palestinian well being officers.
Al-Shifa Hospital crammed with 1000’s of conflict wounded and evacuees. There was preventing very near the hospital. Israel accuses Hamas of working a command middle in tunnels underneath the hospital, and of utilizing medical doctors and sufferers as human shields.
It wasn’t protected for Al-Banna and her husband to go to. At first, they had been in a position to name the nurses and verify on their daughters’ standing by cellphone. However then 4G, telephones and web went down. And underneath an Israeli blockade, the hospital ran out of gas to energy its mills.
Al-Banna’s twins had been amongst a whole bunch of sufferers whose lifesaving machines — incubators and ventilators — turned off when Al-Shifa’s electrical energy went out. Docs crowded all of the newborns onto hospital beds collectively, to maintain them heat. However Gaza’s Well being Ministry says eight of the newborns died.
And on Nov. 12, the World Well being Group mentioned Al-Shifa ceased to perform as a hospital.
“I stored considering, ‘God is aware of if they’re useless or alive,'” Al-Banna recollects.
Often, cellphone alerts would come again, and Al-Banna says her husband managed to get a nurse to ship a video of the infants that had been nonetheless alive.
Al-Banna says she was relieved to acknowledge one in all her daughters from a birthmark. Then she discovered their names on a listing revealed by Palestinian well being officers of infants being transferred to Egypt.
The ladies had been amongst some 31 newborns evacuated Sunday from Al-Shifa Hospital by medics from the Palestinian Pink Crescent and the World Well being Group. They had been transported in ambulances to the Emirates Hospital in Rafah, the place 28 of them had been deemed sick sufficient to qualify to cross into Egypt — to security, and to obtain the care they wanted.
“They weren’t taken out a minute too quickly,” says Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson. “It had been very tough for the employees to provide them enough diet, and preserve them heat. Not one of the infants had dad and mom with them, in order that they did not have entry to any breast milk.”
On Monday, Al-Banna was reunited along with her daughters at Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt. The mom sat at the back of an ambulance along with her daughters, who had been carrying blue fleece hats, bundled underneath blankets, all making the journey to Egypt collectively.
Later, they had been flown from the Egyptian facet of the Gaza border to the capital Cairo for additional care, Harris says.
Within the ambulance at Rafah with Al-Banna and her two daughters had been 4 different untimely infants. She does not know who they belong to.
NPR counted solely 4 dad and mom, together with Al-Banna — all moms, no fathers — accompanying the convoy of 28 toddler evacuees Monday. Poor communications in Gaza have made it tough for medics to contact lots of the infants’ dad and mom.
It isn’t recognized how lots of the dad and mom are nonetheless alive.
So Al-Banna says she is going to take care of as many of those different infants as she’s in a position, on their journey out of this conflict.
Anas Baba reported from Rafah. Lauren Frayer reported from Tel Aviv, and Ruth Sherlock reported from Rome.
