A woman fleeing from Afghanistan has given birth to a baby girl at 30,000 feet on her flight from Dubai to Birmingham.
In the frantic evacuation from Afghanistan, Soman Noori, 26, left Kabul to fly to Dubai on her way to the UK. She was heavily pregnant and accompanied by her husband, Taj Moh Hammat, 30, and their two other children.
The family transferred planes in Dubai and Ms Noori went into labour in Kuwaiti airspace on the way to Birmingham.
There were no medical personnel on the Turkish Airlines flight so the members of the cabin crew successfully delivered the baby girl named Havva, the Arabic and Turkish form of ‘Eve’.
As a precaution, the plane landed in Kuwait, but continued on to Birmingham later that day, arriving at 11:45 BST on Saturday 28 August.
Photographs and video footage showed Turkish Airlines crew cradling the baby and handing her to her mother.
Havva was born just days after another Afghan woman gave birth while on board an evacuation flight to Germany.
The mother, whose identity has been kept anonymous, was on the second part of her journey after fleeing the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. She was aboard a US military plane travelling from a staging base in the Middle East to the US Ramstein Air Base.
According to posts on social media by the US Air Mobility Command, the woman started going into labour mid-flight and began experiencing complications due to the lower air pressure.
The posts on social media said: “The aircraft commander decided to descend in altitude to increase air pressure in the aircraft, which helped stabilise and save the mother’s life”.
“Upon landing, airmen from the 86th Medical Group came aboard and delivered the child in the cargo bay of the aircraft”.
“The baby girl and mother were transported to a nearby medical facility and are in good condition”.
Right To Life UK spokesperson, Catherine Robinson said: “The actions of the airlines and military personnel are entirely commendable. Each acted as they should, recognising the duty of care they have for two people, mother and baby. It is a poor indictment of our wider culture that this attitude is entirely rejected when it comes to abortion”.
