[VIDEO] Gazan Mum Reunites With Her Newborn: "I Was Losing Hope To See My Baby Alive"
She hadn't seen him for 45 days.
At first, the young mother couldn't find her newborn son, Anas, among the 31 tiny babies who had just arrived in southern Gaza after being evacuated from Gaza City's devastated Al Shifa Hospital.
She hadn't seen him for 45 days.
"I was losing hope to see my baby alive," said Warda Sbeta.
She and her husband frantically checked the list of names provided by the head of the neonatal unit where the babies were being cared for, at a hospital in Rafah, and there it was, Anas's name in black and white.
"I felt alive again, grateful to God that we now have our baby safely in our care," said Sbeta, speaking at the hospital as she watched over her sleeping son, whom she had dressed in a light blue sleepsuit and matching hat.
Sbeta, 32, has seven older children and the family, whose home was in Gaza City before the war, are now living in a school in Khan Younis, southern Gaza, that has become a shelter for hundreds of people displaced from the north of the strip
Sbeta was offered the option of being evacuated to Egypt with Anas so he could receive further medical care, but she did not want to leave her husband and her other children.
"I can't leave them with only their father. He won't be able to look after them. So I was obliged to refuse this offer," she said.
Anas was one of only three out of the 31 premature babies rescued from Al Shifa who stayed behind in Gaza. Of the other two, one was unidentified, according to doctors at the Rafah hospital. They did not give information about the third baby.
A World Health Organization official said on Tuesday that two of the eight had died the night before the evacuation.
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