Jewish Woman Gives Birth to Sextuplets in France

A Jewish woman in Strasbourg, France, gave birth to sextuplets.

The five girls and one boy were born very prematurely on Thursday at the Hautepierre Hospital in Strasbourg, requiring the assistance of 30 medical staff members, the daily LeParisien reported, citing the newspaper Les Actualités Nouvelles d’Alsace.

It took four minutes to deliver the babies, who were born at 24 weeks, after which they were taken to the neonatal intensive care unit. They weighed in at between 1.4 pounds and 1.6 pounds and likely will require a stay of many months in the hospital.

The couple have two other children. The Hebrew-language news website B’haredey Haredim identified the father as Rabbi Ovadia Ben-Simon.

The last sextuplets in France were born nearly 30 years ago, in 1989 in Normandy. Sextuplets occur once in 4.7 million deliveries worldwide.