Gaza baby found in a tree after strike finds home with her doctor
A Gaza baby who was found in a tree after a strike on her home killed her family has found a new home with her doctor.
Days old and desperately thin, Baby Malak didn’t even have a name when she was taken to the Emirati Hospital in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah. Her family was presumed dead, so medics called her “Unknown.”
Today, the chubby 6-month-old is the star of the wards where her de-facto guardian, Amal Abu Khatleh, 32, works as a pediatrician. As Abu Khatleh carries Malak — which means angel in Arabic — around the facility, other members of the staff lean in for a kiss and a cuddle.
“We had a lot of catastrophic stories because of the war that affected us, but the one that affected me most is Malak’s,” Abu Khatleh told an NBC News crew in Rafah late last month. Other children had their parents with them, she added, but Malak “did not and her name was ‘Unknown.’”
Malak was found in a tree near her family’s ruined home in central Gaza, apparently flung into the branches by a strike, which killed the rest of her relatives in November.
Shortly after she was taken to Al-Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza for treatment, Dr. Nasser Bolbol, head of the neonatal unit, told NBC News that based on her umbilical cord, he believed Malak was just 2 days old.
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