Newborn baby girl dies five days after being saved from her dead mother’s womb in Gaza
A premature baby rescued from her dead mother’s womb has died in Gaza after spending a number of days in an incubator.
Sabreen Jouda was rescued from her mother’s womb shortly after both of her parents were killed in an Israeli airstrike on the southern city of Rafah on Sunday.
The girl died in a hospital on Thursday after her health deteriorated following five days in an incubator, her uncle Rami al-Sheikh told the Associated Press.
The dead bodies of a 30-week pregnant woman, her husband and their 4-year-old daughter were extracted from the rubble after an IDF airstrike around midnight on Sunday.
Doctors performed an emergency caesarian and kept the baby in an incubator in an neonatal intensive care unit.
34,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza
Five-day-old Sabreen is one of more than 34,000 Palestianians who have been killed in Gaza in Israel’s war against Hamas that was triggered by the Hamas massacre in southern Israel on October 7 last year. The militants killed over 1,200 people and took some 250 people hostage.
The Israeli cabinet at a two-hour long session on Thursday agreed to scale back its demand for Hamas to release the first group of hostages from 40 to 20 people as long as all of them are either women, children, elderly or wounded, Israeli media reported on Friday.
The number and identities of the first group of hostages to be freed was a major sticking point in the talks as Hamas refused to release the list of surviving hostages, leading to fears a great number of them are already dead.
Israel is expected to announce a cease-fire following the release of the first group, and its length will depend on the eventual number of hostages released, according to public broadcaster Kan.
Israeli officials hosting intelligence chief of Egypt
Israeli officials on Friday are hosting the intelligence chief of Egypt who is arriving in Tel Aviv to discuss efforts to jump-start the hostage talks.
On Tuesday, the first day after a week-long Passover holiday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will arrive in Israel on a similar mission.
The Israeli public is getting increasingly impatient with what may see as a failure on the government’s part to bring back the hostages.
Dozens of protesters on Friday morning rallied outside the house of Benny Gantz, a key member of Mr Netanyahu’s government, demanding that he step down if he fails to push through a deal to release the hostages.
Elsewhere, in an apparent goodwill gesture, the US administration has decided not to sanction the three battalions within the Israeli Defence Forces that committed “gross humanitarian violations”, according to a letter from the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to House speaker Mike Johnson cited by ABC News on Thursday.
IDF battalion to be accused of violence against Palestinians in West Bank
Israeli officials fumed last week over initial reports that one IDF battalion, whose members have been accused of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, will be blacklisted by the US from receiving military aid or training.
The undated letter to the House speaker suggests that the US administration decided not to take action against those battalions as the IDF has proved that it took steps to remedy the behaviour of the soldiers in those units that was “inconsistent with rules”.
