A 28 year old pregnant Palestinian woman suffering severe bleeding was forced to deliver a stillborn baby after Israeli soldiers blocked the ambulance she was riding in.
The woman was six months pregnant when she began bleeding and experiencing extreme pain last Monday at her home in Qaryout, in the illegally occupied West Bank. She was carried in an ambulance, on her way to Raffia hospital in Nablus, when soldiers approached the ambulance at a checkpoint with their guns down and ordered the medics to shut off the engine.
The ambulance driver, Bashar Al-Qaryouti, said he had to turn off the woman’s oxygen and the ambulance’s monitors. The nurse on board then told him she would have to deliver the baby or the woman would die.
‘I shouted at the soldiers and they threatened to shoot me,’ Bashar said. ‘Even the nurse who was with me had a weapon pointed at her head while she was trying to treat the patient.’
The ambulance was finally allowed through after being delayed for more than 30 minutes. The Israeli military falsely claimed to Sky News that the incident did not take place, despite video footage from inside the ambulance corroborating Al-Qaryouti’s statements.
