Yesterday, Lamis Tayser Ibrahim, a resident from Deir Ballut village in Salfit district, was prevented from reaching the hospital in Nablus when experiencing premature labor; she is twenty years old with a one year old daughter and was in her seventh month of pregnancy with twins. However, the Occupation military closed off the entire village yesterday, prohibiting all movement in and out of Deir Ballut. When Lamis arrived to the villageâs main road to Nablus in desperate need of medical attention from bleeding and labor pains, Occupation soldiers refused to let her pass.
Lamis sat in her familyâs car, experiencing unbearable pain and fear for the safety of her unborn twins. Despite her consistent pleas, the soldiers prohibited her from passing and from taking shelter from the cold in a neighboring house. An ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital but the soldiers continued to deny her.
Within the time awaiting passage, Lamis began to give birth. The ambulance driver, who himself was not trained for delivery, told Lamis that her cousin would have to help her. Both baby girls were born in the car, a car still unable to pass to the hospital during critical moments of life and death.
After two treacherous hours, the Occupation soldiers âallowedâ Lamis to pass in the ambulance. The timing was all too late. The first newborn child died in the ambulance near Al Luban Sharqiya, a village along the road to Nablus, while the second child died a few hours after reaching the hospital.
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Deir Ballut is a village in southwest Salfit district which is projected to be imprisoned by the Apartheid Wall into a ghetto with its neighboring villages Rafat and Zawiya. All of these villages have been living under continuous closures, predicted by many as the next step for the beginning of destruction for the Wall.
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