Tragic Bombing in Gaza Strip

On the morning of Oct. 15, Noor Rihan's house in Beit Lahiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, was bombed by Israeli forces. Half of her family was killed, and a massive chunk of concrete landed on her back. Having spent three years trying to conceive, Rihan was eight months pregnant.

She was moved, bleeding, to the biggest hospital in Gaza, Al-Shifa. The medics there were overwhelmed by the number of dead and wounded pouring in as Israel retaliated for the brutal Oct. 7 attack launched by Gaza's Hamas rulers.

Amid the relentless bombardment, Rihan was rushed into an operating room and her baby was saved. The boy was put on a ventilator as his lungs had not fully developed.

"After the surgery, they took my son right away. I didn't see him at all," Rihan told CBS News. "I didn't see his features or know what he looks like."

She remained in the hospital for three days. She said there was no food or medicine, and dead bodies were piling up in the hallways.

"I had to leave. I didn't know anything about my family. My house was destroyed, I didn't know who was still under the rubble," she said. "I didn't even know if my husband was alive or dead or where they had buried the dead."

With no money, and in pain from inflamed stitches after her surgery, she walked for an hour and half to reach a school in the Jabalia refugee camp run by the United Nations' aid agency UNRWA. She found her husband there, wounded but alive.

About a week later, she said the school was hit by three missiles, so she decided to leave again — but first, she wanted to see her son.

She went back to Al-Shifa hospital, but they told her if she took her baby, he would die in her arms outside the hospital. Rihan made the painful decision to leave her newborn son. She went to another nearby school seeking shelter, hoping she could visit her tiny boy often.

For three days, Rihan said Israeli army troops surrounded the school.

"Other women were giving birth inside the school, without a doctor. We Gazans were stitching each other's wounds."

She said the soldiers shouted orders through megaphones for everyone in the school to leave, two by two, carrying nothing but their IDs.

Gaza Mother Describes Horrific Conditions Amid Israeli Forces' Attacks

"I was holding my 5-year-old brother's hand. He was wounded and kept telling me, 'I can't walk, Noor. We are walking on glass.' I asked if I could carry him; they [Israeli forces] said, 'No, leave him.'"

"In Gaza, our children, instead of walking around carrying their toys, they are walking around holding their dead siblings," Rihan told CBS News. "This is what Gaza is like."

After leaving the school, Rihan went back to Al-Shifa again, hoping to stay with her son. She said a doctor told her that only God could help now. He offered his condolences in advance, explaining that her child was being kept alive by machines running on a rapidly dwindling fuel supply. Israeli forces were expected to besiege the hospital, underneath which they said Hamas was operating a command center.

"I asked him to give me my son before the siege. He said, 'If you take him, it's the same thing, he will die on the way because of his immature lungs, and the machines aren't operating at full capacity due to the lack of fuel.'"

"I had to leave and move to the south, leaving my heart behind with my son," she said.

As per the latest developments, Rihan has joined the exodus of Palestinian civilians heading to the south of Gaza in compliance with Israel's orders. At the Al-Nuseirat refugee camp, she was informed that Al-Shifa hospital is currently under siege. Israel claims to have initiated a "precise and targeted" ground operation within the hospital.

"I feared the worst for my son," she expressed. "My son was dependent on a ventilator, and they cut off the electricity and destroyed the generators. I lost all hope that my son was still alive."

However, Rihan's baby, along with numerous other fragile newborns fighting for their lives inside Al-Shifa hospital, would soon capture the world's attention as images of them wrapped in aluminum foil to retain warmth circulated globally.

Rihan came across these photos, but she was uncertain which of the babies, if any, was her own. She desperately reached out to aid organizations and anyone else who could provide information about her son's fate. Unfortunately, for a period of 15 days, Rihan was unable to obtain any news about her child.

"Imagine being a mother who is anxiously waiting to learn whether her son is alive or dead. Knowing that even if he is alive, he is still at risk of death," she shared with CBS News. "But there was this glimmer of hope, this one-percent chance."

Finally, Rihan discovered that on November 19, with the assistance of the Red Crescent and the U.N., dozens of babies were transferred from Al-Shifa to the Emirati Hospital in Rafah, located in southern Gaza.

Clinging to the glimmer of hope, a mother and her husband went to the Emirati Hospital and finally learned that their son was still alive. But she still wasn't able to meet him.

"The doctor told me, 'Listen, you are not feeling well. Some of your family were killed, you lost your house, you are going through a lot and you already have postpartum depression. How will you handle it?'"

Later, she was shown pictures, and said her little boy "was in terrible condition" and didn't even "look like a human."

"He was so weak that you could see all his ribs," she said. "I couldn't hold him. He was smaller than the palm of my hand."

Then, in another humanitarian operation, 28 babies were moved from Rafah across the Gaza border to the city of Al-Arish, in Egypt. The tiny boy was among them. Twenty-three of the vulnerable infants were then transferred to a brand new hospital in Egypt's New Administrative Capital, outside Cairo, and the majority of them have since recovered.

On Dec. 5, the mother finally got the required permits to leave Gaza and join her son in Egypt.

She told CBS News the first time she saw her little boy was in Al-Arish, 50 days after he was born. After a nightmarish start in life, there's hope for the mother and her baby boy, Ayman, whom she can now hold in her arms.