On October 7, 2023, three hours before the start of the war on Gaza, baby Nour Abu Saman was born. Her birth coincided with the catastrophe of war from its very first moment.
Her mother, Samar Hammad, gazed at her with joy and contentment until the fateful moment arrived the following day. On October 8, 2023, while Nour was resting in her mother’s arms, Israeli missiles shook their surroundings, filling the air with their suffocating effects. Toxic gas canisters rained down, spreading through the air and choking everyone.
The family escaped the massacre and fled to another shelter. With a hoarse voice and labored breathing, Samar told Al Jazeera Net about those hours: “My daughter suddenly choked in my arms. Her face turned blue, her eyes rolled back, and she entered a critical condition that left her completely immobile.”
After the baby’s condition was diagnosed at Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, it was discovered that toxic gases had entered her lungs, causing paralysis. Thus, Nour was transferred from the delivery bed to a hospital bed, beginning her short life with a difficult journey of pain and hospitalizations.
Samar received what she described as the most painful words of her life when the doctors told her that her daughter was “dead, but on life support,” but she refused to believe it.
Nour’s mother spent a full month at Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital, her eyes constantly watching over her daughter’s bed, her heart torn between hope and dread. The little girl lay in intensive care, while the war tightened its grip around the hospital day by day. Bombing hovered nearby, shrapnel pierced the walls, and hunger and thirst gnawed at those who remained.
As the siege intensified, the atmosphere at the hospital grew increasingly dire. Families sensed the approaching danger, and the pace of evacuations accelerated. It was in those moments that the mother left with her daughter, just before the fighting escalated, carrying a small, battered body, unaware that this act would make Nour the sole survivor of the Al-Nasr Children’s Hospital massacre, following the tragedy that befell the premature babies who remained in intensive care.
After the hospital was stormed, several premature babies remained in intensive care to save their lives. However, the occupation forces removed the life support equipment, and their bodies were later found decomposing on the beds after days of obstruction and denial—a brutal scene that remains a testament to one of the most painful chapters in Gaza’s history.
After Nour was discharged from Al-Nasr Hospital, her ordeal of treatment and transfers between hospitals began. When she arrived at Al-Wafa Hospital, it was targeted, and the little girl emerged from under the rubble and debris of the bombing before being transferred again to the Baptist Hospital. There, she was targeted while still inside. At this point, treatment became synonymous with fear for her mother, and the name of the hospital evoked a sense of temporary survival rather than recovery.
