It was during a shelling of the hospital that the infants were allegedly forced to be left behind by hospital staff, according to employees NBC News spoke to. The hospital's director, Mustafa Al-Kahlot, told the TV channel that the evacuation took place under heavy shelling and that staff made the assessment that they could not take five children, several of whom were born prematurely and dependent on oxygen machines.
Two weeks after the evacuation, during the temporary ceasefire, a journalist for the Emirati television channel Al-Mashad visited the hospital and discovered the bodies of five dead babies. The American TV channel has seen the raw material and writes that the film appears to show how at least three of the infants' bodies have begun to rot.
Experts have reviewed the material
NBC has had two independent forensic experts review the material. According to the experts, the advanced stages of decomposition correspond to the approximately two weeks that have elapsed between the children's abandonment and the film's shooting.
"The guilt and the reason for their deaths are things we can't determine yet, but that doesn't diminish this film's effect on people," NBC reporter Yasmine Salam told SVT.
"We had to leave"
NBC also writes that this information was confirmed by a nurse affiliated with the organization Doctors Without Borders, who volunteered at the hospital.
"We had to leave the patients in their beds," the nurse said in a video, according to the TV channel.
Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a human rights organisation registered in Geneva, is calling for an international independent investigation to be launched into the deaths.
"Their bodies were found in a state of decomposition in what could amount to a horrific execution and a crime against humanity," the organization said in a statement.