Dramatic footage released over the weekend shows doctors in Syria delivering a baby girl via emergency caesarean after her mother was wounded when an explosion shot a piece of shrapnel through her stomach.
The shrapnel can be clearly seen in the baby's head in the footage posted on YouTube. Photo: YouTube
The moment the baby was cut out of her mother's womb is shown in graphic detail in the video, which was posted by the Aleppo City Medical Council, a non-profit medical service in the city, on their Facebook page.
See video of the birth on YouTube here. WARNING: Graphic content
Doctors cut open the mother's abdomen to reveal a finger-sized hole in her womb, through which the shrapnel had entered.
They then swiftly cut open the womb and pulled out the baby, who had a piece of shrapnel lodged in her left eyebrow.
The doctors spent several minutes working to get the baby breathing before a moment of relief when she cried for the first time.
Doctors then pulled the ragged piece of metal from the baby's forehead, revealing a deep gash, and wrapped her up, then returned to work on her mother.
Despite her difficult start in life, the baby and her mother were reportedly in good health and continuing their recovery in hospital.
Syria has been embroiled in a vicious civil war since a popular uprising against dictator Bashar al-Assad in 2011.
More than 200,000 people have been killed and an estimated 4 million have been forced from their homes amid fighting between Mr Assad's forces, Islamic State terrorists, and other militant and rebel groups.
- ABC