Twins born over Cyprus

A KENYAN woman went into premature labour and gave birth to twins aboard a Gulf Air flight over Cyprus on Sunday.

A doctor aboard the flight helped to deliver a boy and a girl for Grace Akosha, 31, before the captain of the flight asked for permission to land at Larnaca Airport in the early hours of Sunday.

The mother and babies were taken to Larnaca hospital from where the infants were later transferred by police helicopter to Makarios Hospital in Nicosia.

The premature twins, born at only 30 weeks and each weighing 1.3 kilos, have been placed in incubators and will be closely monitored over the coming weeks, doctors said.

Akosha had been on her way from Birmingham to Nairobi and was on a flight from London to Bahrain when she went into labour.

“For me it was a big surprise,” she told journalists from her hospital bed.

The Kenyan woman has two other children who are being cared for by her parents in Nairobi.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.