A Daughter's First Birthday, A Father's Last Day

May 7, 2025 started as the most joyful day of Yahya Sobeih’s life. His wife Amal delivered their third child, little Sana, via emergency caesarean section in a Gaza City hospital. Yahya was euphoric.

He cradled his newborn daughter, recited Islamic prayers into her ears, snapped photos, and beamed to everyone around him: “My beautiful princess is here.” He spent hours at Amal’s bedside before leaving around mid-morning to check on their two boys at home, Baraa (4) and Kenan (3), and gather supplies for the baby.

Then came the strike.

At approximately 11:30 AM, an Israeli airstrike leveled a commercial area in central Gaza City. The blast killed at least 17 people instantly and wounded dozens more. Among the dead: Yahya Sobeih, a field journalist documenting Gaza’s war. He had survived exactly five hours after his daughter entered the world.

He was killed while distributing sweets to relatives celebrating her birth. His cousin, closest friend, and brother-in-law died alongside him-the same men who had been at the hospital hours earlier, holding the newborn and congratulating him.

Amal learned about her husband’s death by accident. Hospital staff avoided telling her directly, faces tense, conversations cutting short whenever she approached. When she couldn’t reach Yahya after 15 calls, she grabbed her phone and saw the headline: “Journalist Yahya Sobeih killed five hours after welcoming his newborn daughter.”

“I felt the blood freeze in my veins,” she recalls through tears. “I screamed uncontrollably. I felt like I was losing my mind.”

Still bedridden from surgery, desperate to see her husband’s body one final time, she couldn’t even leave the hospital. “I just wanted to touch him, to say goodbye … but I couldn’t.”

A year later, Amal remains shattered. She’d already lost her brother, sister, and seven nieces and nephews to Israeli strikes. Now she raises Sana, Baraa, and Kenan alone-displaced to southern Gaza after a military ground operation, living in a tent with a one-year-old.

Yet she continues her husband’s work, reporting for the same media company, determined to carry his message forward. On Sana’s first birthday, Amal arranged a small cake and sweets despite her crushing grief.

The little girl, who will never meet her father, somehow comforts her mother when she cries-wrapping her arms around Amal as if understanding the impossible weight she now carries alone.