Newborn infants have been evacuated from Al-Shifa Hospital within the Gaza Strip and crossed into Egypt on Nov. 20, 2023.

Anas Baba for NPR

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Anas Baba for NPR

Newborn infants have 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 have been useless or alive.

On Oct. 4, Al-Banna gave delivery to twin ladies — her first kids — and named them Leen and Bayan. They have been born prematurely and wanted further care. So they have been transferred to Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital, a contemporary facility with a fleet of incubators for newborns.

Al-Banna and her husband visited usually. The ladies have been getting stronger.

“They reached a stage where they were being trained to nurse,” Al-Banna tells NPR. “Then the war happened.”

On Oct. 7, Hamas militants crossed from Gaza into Israel, killing some 1,200 individuals and taking about 240 others hostage, in response to the Israeli authorities. Israel responded with airstrikes and a floor invasion into Gaza that has killed greater than 12,700 individuals, in response to Palestinian well being officers.

Al-Shifa Hospital crammed with hundreds of struggle wounded and evacuees. There was fighting very close to the hospital. Israel accuses Hamas of operating a command middle in tunnels beneath the hospital, and of utilizing docs and sufferers as human shields.

It wasn’t protected for Al-Banna and her husband to go to. At first, they have been in a position to name the nurses and verify on their daughters’ standing by cellphone. But then 4G, telephones and web went down. And beneath an Israeli blockade, the hospital ran out of gasoline to energy its turbines.

Al-Banna’s twins have been amongst a whole lot of sufferers whose lifesaving machines — incubators and ventilators — turned off when Al-Shifa’s electrical energy went out. Doctors crowded all of the newborns onto hospital beds collectively, to maintain them heat. But Gaza’s Health Ministry says eight of the newborns died.

And on Nov. 12, the World Health Organization stated Al-Shifa ceased to function as a hospital.

“I kept thinking, ‘God knows if they are dead or alive,'” Al-Banna recollects.

Occasionally, cellphone alerts would come again, and Al-Banna says her husband managed to get a nurse to ship a video of the infants that have been nonetheless alive.

Al-Banna says she was relieved to acknowledge considered one of 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 have been amongst some 31 newborns evacuated Sunday from Al-Shifa Hospital by medics from the Palestinian Red Crescent and the World Health Organization. They have been transported in ambulances to the Emirates Hospital in Rafah, the place 28 of them were deemed sick enough to qualify to cross into Egypt — to security, and to obtain the care they wanted.

“They were not taken out a minute too soon,” says Dr. Margaret Harris, a WHO spokesperson. “It had been very difficult for the staff to give them adequate nutrition, and keep them warm. None of the babies had parents with them, so they didn’t have access 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 behind an ambulance along with her daughters, who have been carrying blue fleece hats, bundled beneath blankets, all making the journey to Egypt collectively.

Later, they have been flown from the Egyptian facet of the Gaza border to the capital Cairo for additional care, Harris says.

In the ambulance at Rafah with Al-Banna and her two daughters have 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 troublesome for medics to contact most of the infants’ dad and mom.

It’s not identified how most of the dad and mom are nonetheless alive.

So Al-Banna says she’s going to take care of as many of those different infants as she’s in a position, on their journey out of this struggle.

Anas Baba reported from Rafah. Lauren Frayer reported from Tel Aviv, and Ruth Sherlock reported from Rome.