Separated at birth, a Gaza family is reunited.
 

One Essential Read

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Evacuated in an incubator, now back in Gaza getting to know mama

 

Bissan plays with her mother Sundus and brother Baseem inside their tent in Deir al-Balah in the central Gaza Strip. REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa

Bissan was born because of an airstrike.

Two weeks into the war in Gaza, an Israeli attack ripped through her family’s home seriously injuring her pregnant mother and killing her sister. Her mother was forced to deliver her six weeks early to save both their lives.

Weeks later, newborn Bissan was driven out to Egypt in an ambulance while still in an incubator. She was one of a group of 29 preterm infants evacuated from a neonatal hospital ward as invading forces drew close, and seven of those babies died in Egypt. 

While she grew in Egyptian hospitals and a care home, her mother, Sundus al-Kurd, never lost hope that they would be reunited. In March this year, with a ceasefire ostensibly in place, Bissan was returned to Gaza to be reunited with her family.

Reuters documented their reunion and visited with them and several other children who had been evacuated in incubators. Here are their stories.

Read the photo essay
 

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