A fetus was rescued from the belly of a pregnant Palestinian woman who was killed by an Israeli strike, a hospital in the Gaza Strip, where war between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas has been raging for nine months, said today.

The woman, nine months pregnant, was among them at least 24 victimsaccording to the rescue services of the Palestinian enclave, from a series of airstrikes that took place during last night.

He was seriously injured during a raid on Nuseirat camp in the center that killed two other women and a child, according to an official at al-Awda Hospital.

She succumbed to her injuries at the hospital, Dr. Raed al-Saudi, head of the gynecology-obstetrics department of al-Awda, told AFP. “After she died, the doctors did an ultrasound to check the condition of the fetus and found that its heart was beating” before calling in the surgeons, he said.

The latter “immediately performed a caesarean section and removed the fetus,” confirmed Dr. Akram Hussain, an emergency surgeon. “The baby was fine and was taken to al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital” in the neighboring city of Deir al-Balakh, he added.

The father of the newborn, a boy, who was also injured during the bombing, explained Dr. Hussein, was taken to the same hospital.

The Israeli military said in a statement today that it had “killed a number of terrorists in several clashes” in the Gaza Strip, while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said earlier this week that his country should “further increase” military pressure on Hamas.

About thirty people have been killed by Israeli shelling in the past 24 hours, Hamas said in a statement.

The Islamist organization sees this as Israel’s “response” to yesterday’s opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague regarding Israeli settlements.

The UN’s top judicial authority has ruled Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land since 1967 “illegal”, a decision Palestinians have called “historic” and Israel “false”.

The war in Gaza, which broke out on October 7 after an unprecedented attack by Hamas in southern Israel, has killed 1,195 people, most of them civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli figures.

In response, the Israeli military offensive leveled the Gaza Strip, where at least 38,919 people were killed, most of them civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry of the Hamas-run Gaza government.