Qaryout, Palestine - Palestinian health workers said a woman delivered a stillborn baby in an ambulance after the vehicle was allegedly delayed by Israeli soldiers at a checkpoint in the occupied West Bank on Monday.
The 28-year-old woman was six months pregnant and unconscious when medics collected her from her home in the village of Qaryout, south of the city of Nablus, medic Bashar Qaryouti told AFP.
"She was suffering from very heavy bleeding and her condition was extremely critical," Qaryouti said.
The woman was placed on oxygen and the ambulance set off for Rafidia hospital in Nablus, but soon found itself desperately searching for an open route, Qaryouti said.
The entrance to one nearby village was closed, forcing the ambulance to take dirt tracks through olive groves before reaching the Awarta checkpoint, where a gate was shut and a long queue of vehicles had formed.
Qaryouti drove to the front of the line and activated the ambulance siren. He said soldiers emerged from a nearby watchtower about 10 minutes later and ordered him to switch off the ambulance.
Qaryouti said he explained that the vehicle's medical equipment was being used to keep a patient alive.
"They forced me, at gunpoint, to switch the vehicle off," he said, adding that the soldiers confiscated the crew's identity cards.
Following an AFP request for comment, the Israeli military said "the claim that IDF soldiers delayed an ambulance at the Awarta checkpoint is false," and said it did not receive a report of the incident from the Palestinian side.
Israeli army accused of preventing Palestinian woman from reaching hospital
As the ambulance remained stranded, the woman's condition worsened.
The nurse accompanying her was forced to deliver the baby inside the vehicle, Qaryouti said.
"The baby was stillborn," he said.
After waiting for more than 30 minutes, the soldiers returned the crew's identity cards and allowed the ambulance to continue, according to Qaryouti.
When they reached hospital, "the mother was rushed into surgery to stop the bleeding," Qaryouti said.
Rafidia hospital director Fouad Nafaa said the woman had been "prevented by the Israeli army from reaching the hospital."
Her bleeding had since been brought under control, and she was now in a stable condition, he said.
The Israeli military has launched what it calls a "counterterrorism operation" across the West Bank, creating several road closures throughout the territory.
The operation followed an Israeli settler attack on Palestinians in the village of Tell that left two Israelis and four Palestinians dead.
Violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967, has surged since Israel launched its brutal siege of Gaza in October 2023.