Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month

Special Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month
Nearly 20,000 babies have been born in Gaza since the start of the war. (AFP)
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Updated 06 February 2024
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Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month

Pregnant women and new mothers face terrifying ordeal as Israel-Hamas war in Gaza enters fifth month
  • Palestinian women endure childbirth amid displacement, shortages and constant Israeli bombardment
  • Newborns and small children at risk of injury and illness as a result of bombing, poor sanitation and winter cold

JEDDAH: Mashael was at home with her husband when an explosion tore through their building in central Gaza in late December. Since then, Mashael’s unborn baby has not moved. Without prenatal care, she has no idea whether the baby is still alive.

Speaking to aid workers a month after the bombing that buried her husband, Mashael said it was probably for the best that “a baby wasn’t born into this nightmare.”

Her account was shared with Ammar Ammar, regional head of advocacy and communications for the UN children’s fund, UNICEF, during a recent visit to the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, southern Gaza.

“The situation of pregnant women and newborns in the Gaza Strip is beyond belief, and it demands intensified and immediate actions,” Ammar told a recent press briefing at the Palais des Nations in Geneva.




Some 1.6 million people — more than half the population of Gaza — have been displaced to Rafah in the far south. (AFP)

“The already precarious situation of infant and maternal mortality has worsened as the healthcare system collapses … Nearly 20,000 babies have been born into war. That’s a baby born into this horrendous war every 10 minutes.”

After almost four months of fighting in Gaza, the local health system has all but collapsed, leaving pregnant women and newborns especially vulnerable amid a shortage of medical staff and pain relief, an increased risk of complications, and the potential for infections.

Those who give birth in one of Gaza’s remaining hospitals are quickly discharged to make way for the war wounded. The less fortunate are often forced to give birth in tents in one of Gaza’s sprawling and squalid displacement camps.

Some 1.6 million people — more than half the population of Gaza — have been displaced to Rafah in the far south, close to the border with Egypt, where they are confined in an area equivalent to just 20 percent of the entire enclave.

“Our governorate used to be inhabited by approximately 300,000 people before Oct. 7,” Hisham Mhanna, a spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross, told Arab News via WhatsApp from Gaza.

“Now, every inhabitant of this very tiny, limited piece of land is living under very inhumane living conditions, disconnected from the basic needs and infrastructure of water, wastewater, and electricity.




After almost four months of fighting in Gaza, the local health system has all but collapsed. (AFP)

“They are on a daily hunt for food, for shelter, for adequate quantities of water. Some families are actually using seawater to take a shower every 10 days.”

Most families do not have access to hygiene kits or potable water to help prevent infections and the spread of diseases. Many do not even have clothes for new babies to wear.

UNICEF estimates that some 20,000 Palestinian children have been born in the Gaza Strip since the Israeli military offensive began in retaliation for the Hamas-led attack of Oct. 7.

According to data from the World Health Organization, there are more than 52,000 pregnant women in Gaza, among whom 183 are giving birth every day on average. A minimum of 15 of these require a cesarean section — equivalent to more than 700 per month.

Before the conflict, maternal mortality stood at 28.5 per 100,000 live births. This rate is likely to have risen dramatically given the lack of access to adequate care, the lack of electricity to power refrigerators to keep essential medicines, poor nutrition, and inadequate hydration.




Poor sanitation and a cold winter have added to the dire conditions faced by babies and new mothers during the war. (AFP)

And it is not just expectant and new mothers who are at risk. Newborns and small children also face the threat of injury and illness amid the bombardment, poor sanitation, cramped conditions, and frigid winter temperatures.

Since mid-October, more than 145,528 cases of diarrhea have been reported through syndromic surveillance by the Gaza Health Ministry at displacement camps managed by the UN Relief and Works Agency.

More than half of these cases were reported among children under the age of 5 — a significant increase compared to the monthly average of 2,000 reported throughout 2021 and 2022.

Thousands of children have been killed in the bombing, while thousands more have suffered injuries, including severe burns and the loss of limbs. Many other children are unaccounted for, either separated from their parents or trapped under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Just 15 of Gaza’s 36 hospitals remain partially functioning. Meanwhile, 80 percent of primary healthcare facilities are no longer in operation due to the lack of fuel, water, and vital medical supplies or because they have sustained damage.

FASTFACTS

• 20k Palestinian children born in the Gaza Strip since Oct. 7.

• 50k Pregnant women in Gaza, with 180 giving birth every day.

• 155k Pregnant and breastfeeding women deemed to have poor nutrition.

Source: WHO, UNHCR

Those remaining hospitals are operating at many times their intended capacity. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, occupancy rates now stand at 351 percent in inpatient departments and 261 percent in intensive care units.

Nurses are having to turn away many women in labor due to capacity issues, leaving expectant mothers with no option but to give birth in public places, cars, or makeshift shelters, which are often cramped, dirty, and exposed to the elements.

As a result, Mhanna of ICRC said babies were being born “in the most dire humanitarian situation” with “no access to proper nutrition, warmth and hygiene.”

He added: “Some families are struggling also with providing baby milk because it is extremely expensive. Even diapers have become very expensive, the same as many, many other food and non-food items in Gaza.




The maternal mortality rate — 28.5 per 100,000 live births pre-war — is likely to have risen dramatically given the lack of access to adequate care. (AFP)

“On top of that, there is still an absence of safety and security, as well as a staggering level of psychological distress, frustration, depression, anxiety in which children and their parents live.

“We have witnessed many cases of children being the only survivors among their entire families, and there is no future for them.”

UNICEF is particularly concerned about the nutrition of more than 155,000 pregnant women and breastfeeding mothers, as well as more than 135,000 children under 2, given their specific nutrition needs and vulnerability.

Since running an assessment in late December, UNICEF has found that dietary diversity for pregnant and breastfeeding women is severely compromised.

“Expectant and new mothers are exhausted and terrified,” UNICEF’s regional spokesperson Ammar told Arab News. “They are doing everything they can to keep themselves and their babies alive, but they are fighting against the current.

“They do not have adequate nutrition and are exposed to ongoing hostilities, unsafe water and rising cases of numerous diseases. If they make it to a hospital, they get a brief moment of medical care before being thrust back into the chaos of the streets.”




Pregnant women and newborns are especially vulnerable amid a shortage of medical staff and pain relief. (AFP)

Indicative of the traumas faced by Gaza’s new mothers and their families is the story Ammar recalled of another woman he encountered in a hospital during his recent visit to the embattled enclave.

Jwaner, who had given birth just an hour earlier, told Ammar she had no clothes or diapers for her newborn son, Mohammed. The boy was already weak, she said, because she had hardly eaten anything during the last two weeks of her pregnancy.

Mohammed spent just the first hour of his life in an incubator before mother and baby were discharged back to the family’s tent in Rafah, where his 12 siblings waited. “All of them are sick from the cold weather — coughing and fever,” Jwaner told Ammar.

“I don’t have any proper food, even flour to make bread. Most of the children sleep all day because they are so weak and hungry.”

Aid agencies say that unless an immediate humanitarian ceasefire is secured, allowing safe and uninhibited humanitarian deliveries, the plight of Gaza’s most vulnerable will only get worse — scarring an entire generation.


Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack near Jerusalem

Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack near Jerusalem
Updated 41 min 4 sec ago
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Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack near Jerusalem

Yemen’s Houthis claim missile attack near Jerusalem
  • Houthis fired missiles targeting military base in area of Israel's Tel Aviv, spokesperson says
  • Israeli military said interception of projectile from Yemen caused fires in Bet Shemesh

JERUSALEM: Yemen’s Houthi militants said they conducted an attack Monday on central Israel, after the Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from the Arabian Peninsula country.

In a statement, the Iran-backed Houthis said they carried out a “military operation targeting the Nahal Sorek military base” southeast of Jaffa, adding the “hit was accurate and led to a fire”.

Israeli firefighters were battling blazes west of Jerusalem, with the army saying the fires were sparked by debris from an intercepted missile fired from Yemen.
Firefighters were working to douse the blazes, conducting scans around Beit Shemesh to rule out more fires and “damage from interceptor/missile shrapnel,” the Jerusalem region fire service said.

In a statement, it said: “Following the sirens that sounded in the Shfelat Yehuda, Yehuda, and Lakhish areas of central Israel, the IAF (Israeli Air Force) intercepted one projectile that approached Israel from the direction of Yemen.
“The projectile did not cross into Israeli territory. Sirens were sounded in accordance with protocol.”
Yemen’s Houthi militants, part of Iran’s “axis of resistance” against Israel and the United States, have periodically fired drones and missiles at Israel since the start of the Gaza war.
The Houthis have also waged a harassment campaign against shipping in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden during the Gaza war, severely disrupting the vital trade route.


Traumatized by war, hundreds of Lebanon’s children struggle with wounds both physical and emotional

Traumatized by war, hundreds of Lebanon’s children struggle with wounds both physical and emotional
Updated 11 November 2024
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Traumatized by war, hundreds of Lebanon’s children struggle with wounds both physical and emotional

Traumatized by war, hundreds of Lebanon’s children struggle with wounds both physical and emotional
  • In the war that has escalated since September, Israeli airstrikes have increasingly hit residential areas around Lebanon
  • With more strikes on homes and in residential areas, doctors are seeing more children affected by the violence

BEIRUT: Curled up in his father ‘s lap, clinging to his chest, Hussein Mikdad cried his heart out. The 4-year-old kicked his doctor with his intact foot and pushed him away with the arm that was not in a cast. “My Dad! My Dad!” Hussein said. “Make him leave me alone!” With eyes tearing up in relief and pain, the father reassured his son and pulled him closer.
Hussein and his father, Hassan, are the only survivors of their family after an Israeli airstrike last month on their Beirut neighborhood. The strike killed 18 people, including his mother, three siblings and six relatives.
“Can he now shower?” the father asked the doctor.
Ten days after surgery, doctors examining Hussein’s wounds said the boy is healing properly. He has rods in his fractured right thigh and stitches that assembled his torn tendons back in place on the right arm. The pain has subsided, and Hussein should be able to walk again in two months — albeit with a lingering limp.
A prognosis for Hussein’s invisible wounds is much harder to give. He is back in diapers and has begun wetting his bed. He hardly speaks and has not said a word about his mother, two sisters and brother.
“The trauma is not just on the muscular skeletal aspect. But he is also mentally hurt,” Imad Nahle, one of Hussein’s orthopedic surgeons, said.
Israel said, without elaborating, that the strike on the Mikdad neighborhood struck a Hezbollah target. In the war that has escalated since September, Israeli airstrikes have increasingly hit residential areas around Lebanon. Israel accuses the Lebanese militant group of hiding its capabilities and fighters among civilians. It vows to cripple Hezbollah, which began firing into northern Israel after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack triggered the war in Gaza.
But children have been caught in the midst.
With more strikes on homes and in residential areas, doctors are seeing more children affected by the violence. More than 100 children have been killed in Lebanon in the past six weeks and hundreds injured. And of the 14,000 wounded since last year, around 10 percent are children. Many have been left with severed limbs, burned bodies, and broken families — scars that could last for a lifetime.
Ghassan Abu Sittah, a renowned British-Palestinian surgeon who is also treating Hussein, sees that long road ahead. This is his worry: “It leaves us with a generation of physically wounded children, children who are psychologically and emotionally wounded.”
‘What do they want from us?’

At the American University of Beirut Medical Center, which is receiving limited cases of war casualties, Nahle said he operated on five children in the past five weeks — up from no cases before. Most were referred from south and eastern Lebanon.
A few miles away, at the Lebanese Hospital Geitaoui, one of the country’s largest burns centers increased its capacity by nearly 180 percent since September so it could accommodate more war wounded, its medical director Naji Abirached said. About a fifth of the newly admitted patients are children.
In one of the burn center’s ICU units lies Ivana Skakye. She turned 2 in the hospital ward last week. Ivana has been healing from burns she sustained following an Israeli airstrike outside their home in southern Lebanon on Sept. 23. Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes that day in different parts of Lebanon, making it the deadliest day of the war so far. More than 500 people were killed.
Six weeks later, the tiny Ivana remains wrapped in white gauze from head to toe except her torso. She sustained third-degree burns over 40 percent of her body. Her hair and head, her left side all the way to her legs, both her arms and her chest were burned. Her family home was damaged, its ceiling set afire. The family’s valuables, packed in their car as they prepared to leave, were also torched. Ivana’s older sister, Rahaf, 7, has recovered faster from burns to her face and hands.
Fatima Zayoun, their mother, was in the kitchen when the explosion hit. Zayoun jumped up to grab the girls, who were playing on the terrace.
It was, Zayoun said, “as if something lifted me up so that I can grab my kids. I have no idea how I managed to pull them in and throw them out of the window. She spoke from the ICU burns unit. “They were not on fire, but they were burned. Black ash covered them. ... (Ivana) was without any hair. I told myself, `That is not her.’”
Now, Ivana’s wound dressings are changed every two days. Her doctor, Ziad Sleiman, said she could be discharged in a few days. She’s back again to saying “Mama” and “Bye — shorthand for wanting to go out.
Like Hussein, though, Ivana has no home to return to. Her parents fear collective shelters could cause an infection to return.
After seeing her kids “sizzling on the floor,” Zayoun, 35, said that even if their home is repaired, she wouldn’t want to return. “I saw death with my own eyes,” she said.
Zayoun was 17 last time Israel and Hezbollah were at war, in 2006. Displaced with her family then, she said she almost enjoyed the experience, riding out of their village in a truck full of their belongings, mixing with new people, learning new things. They returned home when the war was over.
“But this war is hard. They are hitting everywhere,” she said. “What do they want from us? Do they want to hurt our children? We are not what they are looking for.”
Attacks at home can be hard for kids to deal with
Abu Sittah, the reconstructive surgeon, said most of the children’s injuries are from blasts or collapsing rubble. That attack on a space they expect to be inviolable can have lingering effects.
“Children feel safe at home,” he said. “The injury makes them for the first time lose that sense of security — that their parents are keeping them safe, that their homes are invincible, and suddenly their homes become not so.”
One recent morning, children were playing in the courtyard of a vocational school-turned-shelter in Dekwaneh, north of Beirut, where nearly 3,000 people displaced from the south are now living. The parents were busy with an overflowing bathroom that serves one floor in a building that houses nearly 700 people.
Only playtime brings the children, from different villages in the south, together. They were divided in two teams, ages ranging between 6 and 12, competing to get the handkerchief first. A tiny girl hugged and held hands with strangers visiting the shelter. “I am from Lebanon. Don’t tell anyone,” she whispered in their ears.
The game turned rowdy when two girls in their early teens got into a fist fight. Pushing and shoving began. Tears and tantrums followed. The tiny girl walked away in a daze.
Maria Elizabeth Haddad, manager of the psychosocial support programs in Beirut and neighboring areas for the US-based International Medical Corps, said parents in shelters reported signs of increased anxiety, hostility and aggression among kids. They talk back to parents and ignore rules. Some have developed speech impediments and clinginess. One is showing early signs of psychosis.
“There are going to be residual symptoms when they grow up, especially related to attachment ties, to feeling of security,” Haddad said. “It is a generational trauma. We have experienced it before with our parents. ... They don’t have stability or search for (extra) stability. This is not going to be easy to overcome.”
New phases of life begin

Children represent more than a third of over 1 million people displaced by the war in Lebanon and following Israeli evacuation notices, according to UN and government estimates (more than 60,000 people have been displaced from northern Israel). That leaves hundreds of thousands in Lebanon without schooling, either because their schools were inaccessible or have been turned into shelters.
Hussein’s father says he and his son must start together from scratch. With help from relatives, the two have found a temporary shelter in a home — and, for the father, a brief sense of relief. “I thank God he is not asking for or about his mother and his siblings,” said Hassan Mikdad, the 40-year-old father.
He has no explanation for his son, who watched their family die in their home. His two sisters — Celine, 10, and Cila, 14 — were pulled out of the rubble the following day. His mother, Mona, was pulled out three days later. She was locked in an embrace with her 6-year-old son, Ali.
The strike on Oct. 21 also caused damage across the street, to one of Beirut’s main public hospitals, breaking solar panels and windows in the pharmacy and the dialysis unit. The father survived because he had stepped out for coffee. He watched his building crumble in the late-night airstrike. He also lost his shop, his motorcycles and car — all the evidence of his 16 years of family life.
His friend, Hussein Hammoudeh, arrived on the scene to help sift through rubble. Hammoudeh spotted young Hussein Mikdad’s fingers in the darkness in an alley behind their home. At first he thought they were severed limbs — until he heard the boy’s screams. He dug out Hussein with glass lodged in his leg and a metal bar in his shoulder. Hammoudeh said he didn’t recognize the boy. He held the child’s almost-severed wrist in place.
In the hospital now, Hussein Mikdad sipped a juice as he listened to his father and his friend. His father turned to him, asking if he wanted a Spider-Man toy — an effort to forestall a new outburst of tears. He said he buys Hussein a toy each day.
“What I am living through seems like a big lie. ...The mind can’t comprehend,” he said. “I thank God for the blessing that is Hussein.”


Portraits of pain: smuggled Palestinian art shows trauma of Gaza

Portraits of pain: smuggled Palestinian art shows trauma of Gaza
Updated 44 min 54 sec ago
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Portraits of pain: smuggled Palestinian art shows trauma of Gaza

Portraits of pain: smuggled Palestinian art shows trauma of Gaza
  • Artists in Gaza, for six months, handed over paintings and other artworks to people leaving Gaza through its Rafah border crossing with Egypt

Amman: When war erupted in Gaza, Palestinian artists had only one way to share their work expressing the harrowing reality of the conflict: having it smuggled out of the besieged territory.
For six months, they handed over paintings and other artworks to people leaving Gaza through its Rafah border crossing with Egypt until Israeli ground forces closed it in May when they took control of the frontier.
“The paintings document the brutality of war and massacres... carrying pain and sorrow, but also embodying an unwavering resolve,” said Mohammad Shaqdih.
He is deputy director of Darat Al-Funun, an art gallery in the Jordanian capital Amman exhibiting pieces that were smuggled out in a show entitled “Under Fire.”
While the works themselves managed to escape the war-torn territory, the four artists who created them — Basel Al-Maqousi, Raed Issa, Majed Shala and Suhail Salem — were not so lucky.
They remain trapped within the narrow coastal strip where Israel’s military campaign has killed more than 43,500 people, mostly civilians, according to the Hamas-run territory’s health ministry, and created a humanitarian disaster.
The artworks “depict the daily realities of war and the hardship these artists endure, who have been displaced and lost their homes,” said Shaqdih.
He said the gallery was already familiar with the artists on display before the war broke out on October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militant group Hamas launched an unprecedented attack on southern Israel.

'Nightmares'

That attack resulted in the deaths of 1,206 people, mostly civilians, according to an AFP tally of Israeli official figures.
“The language of art is universal. Through these paintings, we are trying to convey our voices, our cries, our tears and the nightmares we witness daily to the outside world,” said Maqousi, 53, speaking to AFP by phone from Gaza.
The exhibition features 79 artworks crafted from improvised materials including medicine wrappers, and using natural pigments made from hibiscus, pomegranate and tea.
The drawings show people under bombardment, displaced families on donkey-drawn carts, makeshift tents, weary and frightened faces, emaciated children clinging to their mothers and blindfolded men surrounded by military vehicles.
“I can’t paint with colors and expensive pigments because there are more pressing priorities here in Gaza, like food, drink and finding safety for myself and my family” reads a text by Suhail Salem next to his sketches drawn in school notebooks with ballpoint pens.
In a letter displayed alongside his work, Majed Shala describes how he was displaced to the southern city of Deir Al-Balah. His house, studio and 30 years of artworks were completely destroyed.
“When the war first started, I felt completely paralyzed, unable to create or even think about making art,” he wrote.

 

'Far more devastating'

As time passed, “I started to document the real-life scenes of displacement and exile that have affected every part of our daily lives,” he added.
His words are displayed next to a painting of a man embracing his wife amid a scene of destruction.
“These scenes remind me of the stories our elders told us about the 1948 Nakba,” or “catastrophe,” he wrote, referring to the exodus of around 760,000 Palestinians during the war that led to the creation of Israel.
“But what we’re living through now feels far more devastating, far worse than what people endured back then.”
Exhibition visitor Victoria Dabdoub, a 37-year-old engineer, said she was moved by the artwork.
“It is important that works like these are shared worldwide so that people can feel the pain, sorrow, and suffering of the people of Gaza,” she told AFP.
On the wall nearby is posted a message from artist Raed Issa: “We assure you: if you’re asking how we are, we are far from all right! Constant bombing and terror, day and night! Gaza is in mourning, waiting for relief from God!“


Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors

Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors
Updated 11 November 2024
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Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors

Dozens of arrests follow Turkish unseating of mayors
  • Ankara and its Western allies have branded the PKK a “terrorist” organization. The group has waged a bloody guerrilla war since 1984 that has left more than 40,000 dead.

ISTANBUL: More than 30 people have been charged in Turkiye after protests against the removal of three mayors in the Kurdish-majority southeast, who were then replaced by government-appointed trustees, the interior ministry said Sunday.
Those detained, after the authorities sacked the mayors on “terrorism” charges, include a journalist from news website 10Haber.
His lawyer said the reporter was arrested late Saturday following a series of articles on the removal of a mayor in a district of Istanbul.
Authorities have alleged the mayor is linked to the banned Workers Party of Kurdistan (PKK).
More than 250 people have also been detained for participating in protest rallies in mainly-Kurdish southeastern Turkiye against the mayors’ removal.
The ministry said 33 of those detained had been charged, while 37 have been placed under judicial surveillance, while three others face house arrest.
Monday’s replacement of the mayors sparked widespread anger and brought a rebuke from Europe’s top rights body, the Council of Europe, which said the move undermined local democracy.”
The trio all are from the main pro-Kurdish party DEM. They were elected in March when opposition candidates won in many areas, including Istanbul.
Authorities banned rallies in several Kurdish majority provinces after the move.
Images filmed mid-week in Batman showed police officers targeted by firecrackers and dispersing demonstrators with armored vehicles equipped with water cannons.
Ankara and its Western allies have branded the PKK a “terrorist” organization. The group has waged a bloody guerrilla war since 1984 that has left more than 40,000 dead.
 

 


Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike

Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike
Updated 11 November 2024
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Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike

Iran calls to expel Israel from UN after Syria strike
  • Iran's foreign ministry also called for “an arms embargo” against Israel

TEHRAN: Iran’s foreign ministry called Sunday for an arms embargo on Israel and the expulsion of its arch-foe from the United Nations, following a deadly strike in Syria.
Foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran “strongly condemned the aggressive attack carried out today by the Zionist regime against a residential building” in the Damascus area.
The strike on an apartment belonging to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, which is backed by Iran, killed nine people including a Hezbollah commander, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitor said.
Baghaei called for measures against Israel, including “an arms embargo” and its “expulsion from the United Nations.”
Regional tensions have soared since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023, triggered by the Palestinian Hamas militant group’s unprecedented attack on Israel.
The conflict has drawn in Tehran-aligned militants in the region, and included rare direct attacks between Iran and Israel.
Since Syria’s civil war broke out in 2011, Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria, mainly targeting army positions and fighters including from Hezbollah.
Israeli authorities rarely comment on the strikes, but have repeatedly said they will not allow arch-enemy Iran to expand its presence in Syria.