A baby boy abandoned by doctors to die after a botched abortion was found alive nearly two days later.
The 22-week infant later died in intensive care at a hospital in the mother's home town of Rossano in southern Italy.
The mother, pregnant for the first time, had opted for an abortion after prenatal scans suggested that her baby was disabled.
However the infant survived the procedure, carried out on Saturday in the Rossano Calabria hospital, and was left by doctors to die.
He was discovered alive the following day – some 20 hours after the operation – by Father Antonio Martello, the hospital chaplain, who had gone to pray beside his body.
He found that the baby, wrapped in a sheet with his umbilical cord still attached, was moving and breathing.
The priest raised the alarm and doctors immediately arranged for the infant to be taken to a specialist neonatal unit at a neighbouring hospital where he died on Monday morning.
Italian police are investigating the case for "homicide" because infanticide is illegal in Italy.
The law means that doctors have had an obligation to try to preserve the life of the child once he had survived the abortion...
